This interview originally appeared in the September/October 2024 Horn Book Magazine as part of the Publishers’ Previews: Fall 2024, an advertising supplement that allows participating publishers a chance to each highlight a book from its current list. They choose the books; we ask the questions.

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Christopher makes the acquaintance of many apparently not-so-Impossible Creatures when he is enlisted by a girl to help repair the rent between our world and her own magical realm, the Archipelago.

Photo (c) Nina Subin.

1. The places I’d go in that flying coat! How about you?

I’d like to see how high I could get — visit eagles’ nests, fly among a murmuration of starlings. As a child, I loved that feeling when you climb to the top of a hill and the wind rises until it feels like it’s about to sweep you up and away; a coat that allows you to fly, but only when the wind blows, is a salute to that childhood moment.

2. What was your best aha! moment in writing this novel?

The scene where Christopher sees a stampede of mythical creatures — unicorns, ratatoskas, and longmas — galloping down the hill cemented for me that the islands would have a cornucopia of creatures. I wanted it to be a place where you’d meet not just the creatures we’re familiar with but also the fantastic creatures that humankind has invented and half-forgotten: kankos, al-mirajes, karkadanns, kluddes.

3. No spoilers, but was that a hard death to write?

It was, hugely! I loved writing that character. Often in children’s books, we want to spare readers pain, even in a fictional world, but I wanted the book to have something irrevocable in it. I think as a human species we’re bad at confronting the reality of things lost and not regained. I wanted the book to be about the wild, staggering glory of the world, and what we must save before the chance slips from our hands.

4. Any mythical creatures you were sorry to leave out?

So many! But it’s been a joy to put them into the next book in the series: chimeras, in particular, and gaganas, which are talking birds with metal claws and beaks.

5. You are a John Donne scholar — what do you reckon he might have said about Impossible Creatures?

I hope he would have been pleased that one of his poems is part-inspiration for the book. If we dropped him in the twenty-first century, he might have been skeptical of a woman writer, but he believed in bold images and large imaginings. He shows us that language is not a set of rules but rather of possibilities.

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