We chat with author Kit Rosewater about All’s Fair In Love and Field Hockey, which follows a high school field hockey star must choose between her love of the game and her new, distractingly beautiful rival in this queer YA romance, perfect for fans of She Drives Me Crazy and Cleat Cute!
Hi, Kit! Welcome back! It’s been five years since we last spoke, how have you been and what have you been up to?
Oh my goodness. Way to start this interview by making me cry! I’m kidding—mostly. What a strange whirlwind 2020 & 2021 was, with having three books come into the world, all within the shelter-in-place period. Those two years remain sort of hazy in my memory. I’m also going to blame the fact that my first child was born in May 2020. But I’ve been up to a lot since then! School visits, library visits, conference visits, festival visits. And thanks to 2020, I don’t take a single one of those opportunities for granted. I’m out on a small national tour this week to celebrate my YA debut, All’s Fair In Love And Field Hockey, and it is a dream come true four times over since I didn’t get to do this with my MG debut series.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
My mom really fostered a love of books for my sister and I at a very young age. I used to staple paper together and make my own books, then sneak them into my school classroom library. (As if they could pass as actual books… oh dear…) I LIVED for the Scholastic Book Fair coming to my school. But I think the biggest lightbulb moment for being a writer was when my mom decided to take a break from her job as a paralegal and spend the next six months writing and querying a full middle grade manuscript. That’s when I thought oh wow, this is a real thing I could do someday.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Dr. Seuss’ Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now! Apparently my dad used to hide this book from me because of how many times I asked him to reread it in one sitting.
- The one that made you want to become an author: If You Were a Writer by Joan Lowery Nixon. I found this picturebook at a Scholastic Book Fair in third grade and it CHANGED MY LIFE.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Loves Me, Loves Me Not by Anilú Bernardo has been on my mind SO MUCH lately because it’s the first romance book I ever read and fell in love with as a young teen.
Your latest novel, All’s Fair In Love and Field Hockey, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Rival sports stars secretly dating.
What can readers expect?
Fun, swoony moments! Witty and tension-filled banter! Slapstick-level hijinks the main characters get up to as they hide their budding relationship from their respective teams! But also… more than the classic romance tropes, too. All’s Fair is a romance within a queer coming of age journey. There’s grief and academic expectations and complicated familial relationships. But hopefully, all of these elements come together in a whole and satisfying way. Reactions from early readers have been really promising on this front, so fingers crossed!
Where did the inspiration for All’s Fair In Love and Field Hockey come from?
My incredible agent Lauren Speiller had been pushing for me to consider writing YA for a while in the fall of 2021, and she directed my attention to an article in Them magazine titled: “Team USA and Team Canada Womens Hockey Players Keep Marrying Each Other.” That article was like a seed being planted in my head that I thought about off and on, until one day in spring 2022 the idea had grown into this swoony YA romance about high stakes field hockey, and I sat down and wrote it!
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I love writing dialogue. Any time I get two interesting characters together, the pages zoom by and I have to pause and remind myself to describe setting, feeling, internalization, because I just want them to say witty things to each other forever. Thank goodness for my editor Ali Romig, because she’s the one who was able to direct these conversations into some amazing hijinks settings that elevated the dialogue to another level. I LOVED writing the mini golf scene. I LOVED writing the first “secret practice” scene.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
My mom was in the hospital battling cancer while I wrote this book, and the storyline with the protagonist Evelyn and her own mom provided some escapism for me during that time. But those moments were also really hard to write. I think I sobbed my entire way through Chapter Twenty-Four. But also, I’m so, so glad that it’s in there and part of this story.
What’s next for you?
I have another YA romance coming out from Delacorte summer 2026 called Buried Feelings, and I’m working on revisions for that project right now. It’s a contemporary story set in San Francisco about two ex-friends with a complicated past. They’re racing each other to solve a city-wide treasure hunt from the 1980s with clues embedded in LGBTQIA+ history (ala National Treasure, but for the gays.) I had to basically write a treasure hunt to be solved within the book itself, which was really challenging. But I love this book SO MUCH and I can’t wait to share it with readers next year!
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
SO MANY BOOKS. ALL THE BOOKS. Matthew Hubbard’s The Rebel’s Guide to Pride. Alice Murphy’s A Showgirl’s Rules for Falling In Love. Becky Albertalli’s Amelia, If Only. Ashley Herring Blake’s Dream On, Ramona Riley. Rachel Lynn Solomon’s What Happens in Amsterdam. Jennifer Dugan’s Summer Girls. Dahlia Adler’s Come As You Are. Cale Plett’s Wavelength and The Saw Mouth. Charlotte Lillie Balogh’s Kill the Lax Bro. Jenna Levine’s Road Trip With A Vampire. ANYTHING Laura Piper Lee writes. And then so many others I’m not thinking of at this specific moment in time but will kick myself over forgetting in about ten minutes. It’s a HUGE year for books. I am getting fed.
