Speech is Power with Alexandra Villasante

Alexandra Villasante, author of Fireblooms (Nancy Paulsen Books), joins Matthew to talk about paying for our words.

Listen along:

About the book: Fireblooms by Alexandra Villasante. Published by Nancy Paulsen Books.

An absorbing speculative Queer romance, set in a town that uses technology to prevent hate speech and bullying. From the LAMBDA Award-winning author of The Grief Keeper.

When seventeen-year-old Sebastian agrees to come to New Gault to care for his absent and abusive mother after her cancer diagnosis, he is not prepared for the strange new community that awaits him or the distressing state he finds his mother in. He tries to help, but despite being ill, her tongue is as sharp as ever, finding all Sebas’s tender places. But he promised his Abuela he'd try to make this work.

Unfortunately trying also means attending TECH, New Gault’s high school. His first day, he’s assigned to enthusiastic TECH student ambassador, Lu, who introduces him to all TECH can offer—a safe space, free from bullying. But all this safety and technology comes with a catch—not only do you have to watch what you say, but you have to stay within a strict word limit. Sebas declines. To him New Gault feels more like the Stepford Wives than freedom.

For Lu, who suffers from anxiety and has a history of being bullied, TECH is a lifeline somewhere they can be safe. They can’t understand why Sebas would refuse. When Sebas rejects TECH, it feels as if he’s rejecting Lu.

But when Sebas learns if he doesn’t accept the TECH phone and abide by the rules, his mother will be denied cancer treatment, he changes his tune. Slowly, Lu and Sebas form a friendship that morphs into something more, but the closer they get, the more Sebas challenges Lu's beliefs about TECH and what it means to be safe. Meanwhile, Sebas contemplates how to forgive his dying mother for being no mother at all.

This thought-provoking, tender love story examines what we’re willing to give up to feel safe as two broken teens navigate emotional trauma and discover what blooms may come from the ashes.

More:

Visit Alexandra Villasante online at alexandravillasante.com 

Other helpful links:

• Alexandra Villasante at the Highlights Foundation

• LGBTQIA2S+ Voices at the Highlights Foundation - Craft and education, community-building, and resources and support for LGBTQIA2S+ creatives and professionals in and around the children’s book industry.

Learn more about the Highlights Foundation and their upcoming programs by visiting www.highlightsfoundation.org. 

Transcript:

NOTE: Transcript created by Descript. I've attempted to clean up any typos, grammatical errors, and formatting errors where possible.

Matthew: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Children’s Book Podcast, where we celebrate the power of storytelling to reflect our world, expand our perspectives, and foster connections between readers of all ages. Brought to you in partnership with the Highlights Foundation, positively impacting kids by amplifying the voices of storytellers who inform, educate, and inspire children to become their best selves.

I’m your host, Matthew Winner—teacher, librarian, writer, and a fan of kids.

Before we begin, a quick reminder that listeners on Apple Podcasts can enjoy ad-free listening and early access to episodes by subscribing to TCBP +Plus for just $0.99 a month. Just tap the banner in Apple Podcasts to learn more.

I am so excited for our guest today, but first, a preview of the audiobook around which today’s conversation focuses:

Audiobook: The 640 Greyhound bus from San Marcos approaches the pristine new gault terminal. Like it needs to apologize. I see it playing out in my mind. A wide angle, aerial shot of the dinged up bus. Hesitating like it knows it doesn't belong. Correction. The bus is fine. I'm the one that doesn't belong. New Gault is nothing like any other bus terminal I've been in, and as much as Papa and I have traveled over the years, I've seen a lot of them.

Even rich ass San Marcos has a less rich area.

Matthew: That clip comes from Fireblooms (Nancy Paulsen Books) by Alexandra Villasante, a Lambda Literary Award–winning author known for crafting emotionally rich stories that center queer teens, speculative worlds, and the hard choices young people are asked to make in the name of safety.

Fireblooms is an absorbing speculative queer romance set in the town of New Gault, a place where technology is used to prevent hate speech and bullying—and where every word you speak is counted.

Seventeen-year-old Sebastian arrives in New Gault to care for his estranged and emotionally abusive mother after her cancer diagnosis. Hoping to honor a promise made to his abuela, Sebas agrees to try to make things work, even as he struggles with the painful reality of who his mother is—and who she has never been for him.

At school, Sebas is introduced to TECH, a system designed to create a safe, bullying-free environment by limiting what students can say. Assigned a student ambassador named Lu—who finds comfort and safety in the structure of TECH—Sebas is immediately skeptical. To him, the town feels less like freedom and more like control.

When Sebas learns that refusing TECH could cost his mother access to cancer treatment, he’s forced to comply. As Sebas and Lu grow closer, their relationship deepens into something tender and complicated, challenging both of them to examine what safety really means, what it costs, and who gets to decide.

Fireblooms is a thoughtful, emotionally layered novel about forgiveness, autonomy, trauma, and love—about what can grow when two broken teens question the systems meant to protect them.

I’m thrilled to welcome Alexandra Villasante to the podcast for a conversation about Fireblooms, speculative storytelling, queer love, and the power of imagining different futures.

Please welcome Alexandra Villasante to the podcast.

Alexandra: So my name is Alexandra Villasante. I am the author of Fireblooms, and I consider myself not only an author, but an advocate. I'm also the co-founder of the Latinx Kid Lit Book Festival in the Latinx Storytellers Conference. And I, I consider myself an advocate because I want to get as many diverse kids books into the hands of kids as possible in whatever way that I can.

So in my work with the Highlights Foundation, I try to do that too, the Highlights Foundation, which will soon be called Boyd Mills. I know you know that. And that is really how I see myself. 

Matthew: That's lovely. And kudos on your work and your colleagues work on the Latinx Kid Lit book festival. That was, it's al it's been a really wonderful thing to be able to [00:05:00] amplify and thank you.

And also just see a lot of faces that I know, it's in our community. I think it's something that makes librarianship and kid lit, the whole kid lit world really special is that it really does feel like we, we look out for our own and want to champion our own. That's great. All in service of readers.

It's a great thing. Alex, can I ask you, what's giving you hope today as I'm greeting you in on this snowy morning, snowy 

Alexandra: day? One, I'm so glad I'm inside. No what's given me hope right now, and I think this is a great question because it's made me stop and look. At what are the hopeful things that maybe I had not been really giving enough attention to?

Because the world is so very busy and very challenging and very difficult. So stopping and looking for the things that are giving me hope is just a wonderful exercise. And the thing I came up with there are a few, but this one I honed in on was. Community and I use [00:06:00] that word with intentionality because I know that sometimes it is co-opted by corporations.

You might have your cell phone company calling you part of their community. I'm like and I don't want to dilute the term community because to me, community is we are in conversation with each other. We are amplifying and lifting each other up and we are providing mutual aid to each other.

So those things are really important to be in a community. It's not necessarily identity based. It can be, but it is those three things that I see as community and comida, and that is the work that I am the most interested in. I love writing for kids. I love talking to kids, but being part of a.

That really works together to do those three things, the mutual aid, the amplification, lifting up of others, and to be in discourse. 'cause we have to continue to talk about the things that impact [00:07:00] our lives, kids' lives, our society. That work of discourse doesn't end. It shouldn't end because we are trying to make the longest missa, the longest table possible to include everyone.

That's what is. 

Matthew: Thank you. That's beautiful. I. Have been so excited to talk to you about a book of yours ever since you and I met. It has to have been years ago at Higher Lives years ago. Yes. I believe possibly before Grief Keeper even came out. It's possibly you. I, it might be, were about to debut. It was. A very special privilege for me to get to listen to Fireblooms on audiobook. I listen to Grief Keeper as well. Then Fireblooms. I'm actually not quite finished with as of recording. I can only listen to so fast. I can tell you as the author, you'll know where I am. I am after a beautiful scene of Fireblooms where.

Jordan has entered a picture. And I [00:08:00] cannot wait to finish this book, but before I get to talk to you about craft and this story, I'd love to ask you for a book Talk of Fireblooms for all the other readers who have not yet encountered it. 

Alexandra: Sure. So Fireblooms is a young adult speculative romance, and that's just the shorthand for what it is.

But the way that I see it it's about a place. Really, it's about a place that markets itself as a utopia. It's called, the place is called New Gault. And in this place so many services and luxuries are free. There is food, there is state-of-the-art, medical care. There is award-winning education.

This place is a shining city. But to live there, a family with children from the age of 13 to 18, those children have to pay for all the words that they use. They have to agree to be surveilled, to have their words counted, watched, taken apart, and put value on some words are more expensive than others.

A [00:09:00] hateful word, a curse word, will be more expensive than a sort of ordinary word. And the. The impetus behind this company that owns this town is to try to curtail bullying and hate speech. That's a very worthy aim. And so I started with the idea of this place and what this place would be like.

A place where you can have safety and also have luxury, but would also have to vary in a very real sense. Give something up. And I thought about the people who would live in this place, and we have the dual point of view. The person who lives in new Gault and really feels like this place is the right place for them is Lou.

And Lou is somebody who is got the heart of a poet. Is a non-BAR, non-binary person who has anxiety, who has mental health issues, who has a loving family and has feels after having been through some horrific things in their life that they've gotten to a place [00:10:00] of safety. So they really feel that new Gaul and this, the tech high school in this place, that sort of allows 'em to feel this way is worth saving and fighting for.

And then on the other hand, you have the outsider. You have se comes in really not here for it, not here for this, what this town is doing. Not here for having his words curtailed or monitored. He. He's a fan of the F word. He's a fan of words. He's a fan of expression. He's a fan of creativity and he's there reluctantly because his mother, is undergoing cancer treatment. And in order for her to live in this really wonderful, shining city he has to live with her and he has to sacrifice his words. So that's the premise. And they come together and you can already see just what, by what I've said, how they would have very different.

Differing views. And I wanted more than anything for them to act upon each other and to really open up each other's minds and and their opinions and to see other things [00:11:00] because I'm never a fan of in, in writing, telling kids. What the right thing is, or what I think the right thing is.

I really wanna open as many possibilities and as many thought experiments. What would you do? How would you feel? What would happen? As you said, that's a spoil, maybe a spoiler, but when somebody comes back into your life that you did not think that you would have to see again, and you have to work through those challenges.

That's what Fire Bloom is about. It's definitely got some a lot of family, a lot of heart, but a lot of difficult things that kids go through.[00:12:00] 

Matthew: And if I might add, it's got. It asks the question at times of what sacrifices are you willing to make if you have to say, boss is so clearly and confidently, anti surveilling and and being willing to opt in to a space where you are surveilled until, confronted by his mom saying, don't you realize why you're really here?

This relationship that we know is not a great relationship with his mom. But maybe that maybe Seba has tuned out the reason for why you're going to visit mom. [00:13:00] There were moments there that were really beautiful and I want to give compliments to you as well for telling this story in two voices, that sort of handoff really, I guess I'm asking about craft and whether or not the story was always written that way because you propel the story forward by passing the baton.

In some cases, passing the viewpoint of we're in a scene and we go. Look at that scene suddenly from a different perspective, but at other times as I would expect a writer to do, naturally we've got, say Boss and Lou doing two different things and wondering what's going on with the other person that we're not hearing from them or trying to guess, why can't I understand this person?

Why aren't they opting in to the thing that feels so obviously the right thing to do? Really, trying to understand one another. So Alex, was this story always too voiced for you? 

Alexandra: So it actually started off as a three point of view because I had an, yeah, I know, surprising. I had a third point of view [00:14:00] that was supposed to work as an inst interstitial, not as constant, but just every once in a while.

And that point of view was actually gonna be by the the tech creator, the person who, whose idea was to make this city. Because at the time when I was first working out how the speculative fiction elements worked I was, I wanted to. I think I was trying to overexplain like, why would somebody do this?

What would there be their intentions? And I wanted to have that idea because I do think that technology is a tool and how people implement it is one thing. And then how people use it is another. And sometimes those things don't match. So cool idea, but it didn't really work for the story because.

Just as you were saying, explaining that sort of handoff from one one point of view to another point of view from, say, west to Lou, for example. That intimacy between how they, you sometimes see the same scene from two different perspectives. Yes. Or you sometimes find them in on their own wondering what the other is thinking.

That is the intimacy that I wanted to get to. So that third point of view really [00:15:00] didn't add to that and it didn't add to the story. So I really focus then on the two of them. It was, I'd never written dual point of view before. I actually had at the highlights foundation, a little lesson from, you may have heard of her, Lori House Anderson over dinner one night.

Oh, cool. Where I told her I was working on a dual point of view and I was like, I don't know how to do it. And she took out the salt and pepper shaker in the little sugar container and started weaving them together in this. Dance and explaining to me how she did it. And so I was like, so I'm not saying that from then on I knew exactly how to do it, but it definitely sparked something in me visual where I was like, okay, and Lori explained this to you so you absolutely can do it.

So that was really the craft. Part of it, but for the reason you mentioned, I really wanted that sense of intimacy and that sense of these are very opposing ideals that they have. They can't understand each other. They want to understand each other. And that feeling of like trepidation, but also curiosity about somebody who is different [00:16:00] from you is very real.

And I wanted to root the reader's experience in that. 

Matthew: You do it tremendously well, Alex, it's very. Intimate. It's very maybe disarming at points as a reader to be. I'm glad that third voice exited, I assume for the very reason, like we're saying because the tension. Good and bad given by those two voices swapping to have any break in that tension I think would've been a really great disappointment for the reader because I it's the compelling force in this book and it's a such a beautiful force.

I thank you. Loved, I loved how they understood one, and I love the example of them. Understanding one another through the way that voice went back and forth. Quite frankly, too, I'm an elementary school librarian, so we don't have a lot of romance books. The thing I could map [00:17:00] this onto is we have a lot of falling and like books.

Friends finding each other, and I find, oh, I, I really like that tension as well of we are different people, so how do we reconcile that we're different people, but also that can cause. Us to understand ourselves better by finding a good match for us, a safe match for us that challenges these things and having having the challenge that each individual is going through.

I have to be juggled with, but I'm also trying to get to know them. So why are they like out of the conversation now? I thought we were just having these intimate moments of conversation. It's just it's wonderful. I say that just to say that your book really met me right at the right time.

It's a wonderful story. It, I'm so glad. I love the notion too with speculative fiction that you're keeping it just close enough to Yeah. This wouldn't be surprising to find out that there's a. School [00:18:00] announced opening. Next school year. That is exactly like this. It's just close enough to make us wonder is how much do I like this or how much don't I I would love to ask you, because I think I was hearing about it a little bit earlier about.

Reliance to devices or being bound to devices. The children now have always grown up with devices. You and I grew up in a world that, that straddled the two. A world without maybe so much reliance on data into a world where all we do is give up our data when we click agree and don't really read all of that fine print on the apps that we accept.

Yeah. So what is your relationship with devices? You, I guess maybe I should compliment first and say this doesn't at all read like a book where there's some grownup being like, listen, devices are bad. We should all not do devices instead it, it beckons that we. We ask ourselves to, what are we giving up and what are we benefiting [00:19:00] from? Is that where you're coming into? That's basically 

Alexandra: it. I 

Matthew: love that. Good for, 

Alexandra: i, again, technology is a tool. Yeah. And the like all the things that we have built in our in, in civilized, in, not civilized, like we're civilized, but like in, in memory, in, in history, that with the history that we know.

Everything we've built from hand tools to cities, all of these things are tools. How we use them is a completely different thing. And also what I wanted to talk about with this book is how some people have access to technology and some people don't. So it is not. Equitable. It is not something that people can have.

Technology can may be power and not everyone has power. Speech is power. So while the idea of new gauld and tech high school being a place where you don't get bullied by hate speech and everything is monitored, so if anything happens, everyone's aware. So this problem should go away, right? Fine. But then who are the people [00:20:00] who can afford.

To pay their word debt and the people who can't, and who are the people who can afford to say more things to say, better things to say, more hateful things, and who cannot. So I really wanted to just focus on how people use the tools of the devices and how as educators, as parents as people in, we are always looking for ways to use tools.

To make things better for kids, right? But we often move towards a one size fits all without thinking about the individuals, again, the different circumstances that kids are in, what, where their economic situation is, what their ability to, speak different languages, is what their support system is like, all those things.

So I guess what I'm trying to say about reliance on devices is it is a, it is not an either or. It's not a, this is good, [00:21:00] this is bad. It's really about. I would want kids and teachers and librarians to really talk about let's think about this. What does this mean? What it would mean for, what would it mean for me?

I think about just recently the social media platform ban in Australia has gone into effect 16 and under, cannot have access to social media apps. They can have access to phones and devices, but not social media apps. And what, and that's gonna be a social experiment. We don't know. What's gonna happen?

We don't know how they're gonna be, but I do. I they, in this I think it was a BBC report that I saw that a teenager was like how am I gonna get in touch with my friends? And I'm thinking. Amiga, you can just call them, you can text them, and that speaks to this reliance of are we giving our kids enough information on here are all these different things you can use them for, you can use your phone as a storytelling device instead of just consuming stories.

You can tell stories. So just talking about devices, not just clicking agree and thinking no more about it, but [00:22:00] making ourselves and them savvy digital citizens is ho Hopefully the conversation that gets triggered with this, 

Matthew: There's a, one of my favorite scenes in the book that I've read so far speaking of conversations, is when Sebas is talking to mom about meeting Lou and having that conversation with mom about how here are the things you can say and here are the things you, mom, you can't ask that you can't do that. But there was some really wonderful language around the bridged cancer as well as identity in that, the way any of us show up in this world there are some people that very freely speak about.

What they're going through or how they identify or what their overlaps with other individuals looks like. And there are others that feel that's their, that is our charge on earth to to amplify our visibility and [00:23:00] others that, that feel like that is extremely private. And we don't ask about that.

And I thought, that to me felt so symbolic of the tenderness that you have put into this relationship between Sebass and Lou. Can I just say 

Alexandra: how glad I am that you brought that up because that was very intentional in the good that scene. Oh, Alex, oh, it's so nice when Sebass is talking to his mom about and she is a person who is older and also has, she is a problem, a problematic person with a lot of terrible.

Ideas and opinions. And he is protecting Lou. He doesn't want Lou to be hurt. And then so he does talk to his mom about what she can and cannot say, and she struggles with pronouns and she struggles with gender and she struggles with these things she's not aware of. And then.

Soon in the next scene when and Lou are talking, Lou is wondering I didn't know if I could bring up cancer. And I put those things close together for that reason. Exactly. Because I just want people to be mindful [00:24:00] that the way that they see the world or want to be represented may not be the way the other person is.

And asking and listening to what that is, is just it's just. Folks, it's not that hard. I'm sorry. It's not that hard. You can ask, you can be mindful. You can meet the person where they are and who they say they are. And that's it. You don't have to do anything else. You don't have to try to make them like you or make them fit or conform to your idea of what something is.

You can meet them where they are and accept them where they are, and that's it. I don't know what else to say about that.

Matthew: In your speculative fiction work, I have to, whenever queer representation comes up in speculative fiction, I'm like, listen, we are all building the world that we want.

Is, was that part of the drive in writing this? I think about 8-year-old Matthew and I think about the future that, I didn't know what exists for me. Yes. And I think about how teaching children has been my [00:25:00] defiant act of securing a queer future for all of us. 

Is this the charge that you feel called to Alex?

Alexandra: I'm not that grand. I'm writing my own experience. That's piece, reading my own piece. I'm my own, I'm writing my own representation. I did not have these books when I was a kid. There's a lot I didn't know about myself. My parents are immigrants. I love them very much, but they came into this country and everything that they saw that they didn't understand, they assumed must be some American invention, which I think is really hilarious.

But so mental illness was something Americans had and we didn't have it. Huh. Okay. Yeah. If you teach, if you talk to a bunch of Latinos and a lot of immigrants sure will say oh yeah, my folks do. And queerness a hundred percent was something that we didn't do, but Americans must have invented it.

And it was just this idea of otherness. They were already othered where they were, obviously Sure. From where they are. And they were definitely, they had people be prejudiced against them in, in, at the same time, they [00:26:00] really were wary of Americans and anything that they didn't understand.

And when they had a kid who was queer and who was into weird music and liked art and writing and definitely had mental health issues, they. We're not equipped to, to deal with it. So all that to say, when I write this representation, it's important to me because I didn't have it. But also it's not only part of my youth and childhood, it's also part of my right now.

It's part of the community. The communities that I'm in, these are the people that I love and the people that I find are part of my, just the most incredible group of folks. I can name some of them. Alison is one of them. Alison Green Meyers, Nica Ramos, Mia Garcia. There's so many people.

Ann Marie Mamore, who I will say this. Ann Marie Mamore was my mentor at. Highlights Foundation slash Boyd Mills. Before I was published, they [00:27:00] were at summer camp and. They really just drew out so much goodness out of me in my writing in my life. They really are a seminal person in my life. Not only are they the most incredible writer, but as if that were not enough, right?

But in addition to that, it's just that they really helped me just go even further into this representation and not have fear. And not have fear in writing what is true for me. 

Matthew: I think that for any of us to live the lives we've lived and choose to help both amplify visibility of the communities with which we identify, but also help.

Maybe make the path a little smoother for the people coming after us. It just feels like a really terrific act because you didn't need to be a writer. You didn't need to do this, or you could've done whatever you wanted. [00:28:00] And in fact, you don't need to write books about the topics that you do.

It's a defiant act, I think, to choose to write. The love that you do the representation that you do, and it's a beautiful thing. So thank you for that. 

Alexandra: It's just what is it's good. 

Matthew: No, listen, I'm, thank, I'm thankful for your existence then Alex. And that's just what it is. There you go. I like that.

Okay. So tell me today what your role at highlights looks like at Boyd's Mill looks and how the years that you've spent there. Have impacted your writing, if at all? Are they separate? Are they, does one touch the other? I'm sure they do. They're woven, aren't they? 

Alexandra: They're woven in a hundred percent.

And I've actually, in both the, both my novels that I've published, I acknowledge the wor the spirit and the magic of Boys Mills and how that helps create the work that I share with the world. And it's, grief Keeper came out, af before I started working at boy Mills and Fireblooms after.

And I think that my work [00:29:00] at Boy Mills what it does for me is, oh man, it's just so special because f. We meet people who have so much love and passion for creating for kids, but they don't know how, what they don't know how to start, or they don't know how to keep going. 

Matthew: Yes. 

Alexandra: Or they've been writing for a while, they don't know what's next.

And to be able to help them talk that out and share our experiences. I get to do the kind of work that I wanna do in writing, but in my day job, it's pretty incredible. Yes. I have to sometimes say, okay. Stop checking your work email and maybe start working on that book, because it's, it is, I do have to separate it in that way.

I have to make sure that I find the time to write as well. But it's something that, that fills my cup because I get to meet the most incredible faculty and students. Yes. And that just continues to grow this community. The, I wanna make sure that when I say community, I don't mean like us and them, the us of the community can get as big [00:30:00] as you as the whole wide universe.

We can just keep going. We can let everybody in. So anyway, that's a long way of saying that. I think it really feeds my creativity. I just have to be careful to s save enough time to do the quiet work of writing because, that's how the words get on the page. 

Matthew: Yes. Terrific. I wanna close our time by you thinking about those readers that will find Fireblooms and that have found so much of the other work you've written and ask you this, Alex, I'll see a library full of children tomorrow morning.

Is there a message I can bring to them from you? 

Alexandra: Oh, what a great job you have, Matthew. What a great job you have to see those kids. I am lucky enough to see some of those kids at school visits and I do school visits with Lambda Literary and I do school visits on my own and with the Latinx Kid Lit Book Festival and the message that I.

Hope kids leave my school visits with is that they are creative people. So I want kids to know that they are [00:31:00] storytellers, they are their own storytellers, and that. One, if they have been told that they're not creative, the people who told them that are wrong, they are, they have creativity in so many different ways, and I show them some of the ways I walk through some of the things, like if you're playing a video game, you are in the story that you're telling with the choices you're making.

If you're writing your, a note or a song, that is creativity. But even if you're not doing any of those. Things you are creating your own story and the choices that you make in your life. And I would love kids to have the message of you are a creative, that's who you are, your most precious self is about creation, about making for yourself and for others.

And if you lead with that, it will just make the world a better place. I truly believe [00:32:00] that.