Fairy tales have been spun for thousands of years and remain among our most treasured stories. Weaving fresh tales with unexpected reimaginings, At Midnight brings together a diverse group of acclaimed YA writers to breathe new life into a storied tradition.
We chat with Dahlia Adler, editor of At Midnight, all about the anthology, writing, book recommendations, and more!
Hi, Dahlia! Welcome back! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Thanks for having me again! For those who don’t know me, I’m an author (most recently of Home Field Advantage), anthologist (with a brand-new anthology called At Midnight), editor (currently for the interactive fiction platform StoryLoom), and book blogger (for a number of sites, but most notably my own site—LGBTQReads.com—and Buzzfeed Books). I’m also married with two kids and I live for flavored coffee and macarons.
When did you first discover your love for writing?
My love for writing started really young, and I was writing YA well before I was a teen. I definitely didn’t think I’d actually end up getting to do it for a living back when I was blatantly ripping off Sweet Valley High and the Baby-Sitters Club!
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
Literally the first book I ever remember reading was Little Bear. The book I loved so much that I used to sit there transcribing my library copy onto my computer so I could own it for myself, before realizing I could also just…write my own books was Ellen Tebbits by Beverly Cleary. And the one I can’t stop thinking about changes by the day, but at this very moment in time is Nine Liars by Maureen Johnson.
At Midnight: 15 Beloved Fairy Tales Reimagined is out November 22nd with stories from Tracy Deonn, H.E. Edgmon, Hafsah Faizal, Stacey Lee, Roselle Lim, Darcie Little Badger, Malinda Lo, Alex London, Anna-Marie McLemore, Rebecca Podos, Rory Power, Meredith Russo, Gita Trelease and Melissa Albert. If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Magic, romance, revenge, obsession, and catharsis.
What can readers expect?
At Midnight has such a wide variety of approaches and voices—expect to see a real mix of genre and tone! We have really light romances and really vengeful crime stories and everything in between. But it also very much keeps with a lot of the original themes of the Andersen/Grimm/Perault versions, which is fun!
Where did the inspiration for At Midnight come from?
100% from Anna-Marie McLemore, who made the suggestion that it be my next anthology when we were talking about what other reimagining collections I could do. They wanted to write for it but not edit, and I was looking for another collection to edit regardless of whether or not I could write for it (though ultimately I did), and so that worked out perfectly!
Can you tell us about how this talented group of authors came together for this anthology?
Well, given it was Anna-Marie’s idea, they were the obvious first author on board. Then the rest came together in bits and pieces for different reasons. This was my third collaboration with Sarah Barley at Flatiron, so when she suggested some of her authors, I was very on board—Gita, Meredith, and Melissa came to the collection that way. Stacey Lee and Rebecca Podos were actually both slated for an anthology proposal of mine I still haven’t managed to sub yet, and when I knew this was going to take precedence, I asked them to jump over because I thought they’d nail this as well. (And they did!) Tracy Deonn was just so obviously going to do something incredible with Legendborn and I wanted that magic in this collection, and Roselle Lim has such a lovely magical way with her writing in adult fiction that I knew would be perfect. I was actually trying not to go for authors who already write fairy tale retellings, but I just thought having the author of Ash (i.e. Malinda Lo) was too iconic a move not to try. Alex London, Rory Power, Hafsah Faizal, and H.E. Edgmon have all written sharp-edged YA SFF that’s just so deeply my jam and had exactly the energy I wanted, and Darcie Little Badger’s been doing such interesting work I thought would translate really well to fairy tales. And voila!
And what about which fairytales were selected and included?
As with all my anthologies, I asked the authors to select their top three choices and then did a little negotiating from there until everyone was telling a unique story. I did step in once or twice to ask authors to do something specific, or choose from a specific three, to make sure that we had stories I felt couldn’t be left out of a fairy tale anthology, though we’re still missing a bunch I would’ve loved to have! But I think it’s cool that’s more obscure tales were chosen, including one I’d never even heard of before!
What’s next for you?
My next book, Going Bicoastal, comes out June 13, 2023 from Wednesday Books, and the paperback of Cool for the Summer (with its gorgeous new cover) releases that day as well! As for my next anthology, I’m taking a break from reimaginings to do a collection of stories about girls in sports called Out of Our League, coedited with the brilliant Jennifer Iacopelli. That’ll be out in winter 2024.
Lastly, what have been some of your favourite 2022 reads? Any 2023 releases our readers should look out for?
Some big favorites in YA were Beating Heart Baby by Lio Min, Man O’ War by Cory McCarthy, All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir, Nine Liars by Maureen Johnson, How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow, All That’s Left in the World by Erik J. Brown, This Rebel Heart by Katherine Locke, At the End of Everything by Marieke Nijkamp, And They Lived by Steven Salvatore, She Gets the Girl by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick, The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum, and Self-Made Boys by Anna-Marie McLemore. In adult, I really enjoyed Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner, Lavender House by Lev Rosen, Rainbow Rainbow by Lydia Conklin, The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean, In the Event of Love by Courtney Kae, Delilah Green Doesn’t Care and Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail by Ashley Herring Blake, and A Novel Obsession by Caitlin Barasch.
I don’t wanna overwhelm anyone’s TBR (obvious lie), but I’ve read such great books coming in 2023. Highly recommend Always the Almost by Edward Underhill, Where You See Yourself by Claire Forrest, Something Like Possible by Miel Moreland, Then Everything Happens at Once by M-E Girard, Friday I’m in Love by Camryn Garrett, When You Wish Upon a Lantern by Gloria Chao, This Time It’s Real by Ann Liang, and Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni. Also, I haven’t personally read any of them yet, but I know Lev Rosen has at least two releases coming in 2023, and I just love everything he writes. And of course, keep an eye out for more from the At Midnight contributors, like Godly Heathens by H.E. Edgmon and Venom & Vow by Anna-Marie (and Elliott) McLemore!
