When I approach fantasy writing, I think of the fantastical as a tool for adding dimension to my commentaries on the real world. I was trained as a historian, and in the history profession we discuss the way that history is impossible to recount objectively — any historical narrative, regardless of the facts, is interpreted through the present in which the historian lives, their social circumstances, individuality, and the concerns that led them to study the moment of history they study. I think that SFF authors, similarly, write fantastical worlds that are shaped by our own histories and present concerns.

My first two books, When the Angels Left the Old Country and The ­Forbidden Book, are both historical fantasies, using Jewish folkloric elements and a fairy-tale atmosphere to comment both on the moments in history I chose and, of course, on the present in which I chose those moments. I want my readers to come away from my books having soaked in a good story but also thinking a little more deeply about the world they live in and what is possible within this world.

I chose to use fairy-tale elements in both of my books because by adding a layer of metaphor to my characters’ explorations of their identities, fantasy leads to an openness of imagination rather than a didactic lesson on the themes I want to express. Fairy tales have always played the dual role of entertainment and social commentary, helping people access elemental emotions. Many also contain subversions of social order (think of any story in which a clever peasant passes a king’s impossible test). But they’re often told in ways that nevertheless villainize societal others — which includes, of course, Jews in much of Christian European folklore but also disabled people and those who don’t fit a heterosexual, gender-normative paradigm.

My reality, the reality of living in several of these villainized identities, demands that I find ways to reform the idea of the fantastical to include people who look, feel, and act like myself. Placing marginalized characters within both historical and folkloric narratives asserts that we have always been here and that we belong in the stories our communities tell. The demon protagonist, Little Ash, in Angels experiences double marginalization — as a Jewish person by human beings (and gentile demons) and as a non-normative individual within the Jewish community. Here I’ve used the idea of a “Jewish demon” (present as a possibility in folklore as far back as the Talmud) to ask questions about who belongs in a community and why we reject people from our communities based on inherent qualities rather than actions.

Little Ash as a character is literally queer (and disabled) but also marginalized as a demon on the level of fantasy, ideally providing a metaphor for marginalization that anyone can relate to regardless of their specific real-world experiences. Similarly, I used the concept of possession by a dybbuk (an unquiet ghost) in The Forbidden Book as a multidimensional commentary on gender, sexuality, and agency. The protagonist, Sorel, is assigned female but possessed by a male spirit, and she finds possession fits her better than her assumed social role. Here the idea of spirit possession represents both an expansion of personal identity beyond normative assumptions and the universal adolescent experience of becoming something wild and strange that adults don’t understand.

In a world where people in power demand that human beings conform to fixed, narrow, and clearly separated categories, I write fantasy because it rejects the idea of clear ­categorization. It’s important to me to represent my specific culture, but it’s equally important that readers both inside and outside of that culture feel the universal human questions that I ask. I hope that my readers bring their own experience to my stories and connect to the multiple possibilities inherent in a fairy-tale narrative, even that my readers find meanings that I haven’t considered. Regardless of background and culture, we have more in common with each other than not, and solidarity between all groups striving for equity is essential.

From the May/June 2025 special issue of The Horn Book Magazine: Perception and Reality. Find more in the "Reality Reimagined" series here.

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