What Gives Alexandra Villasante Hope

More hope. From the kidlit community, to you.  

No matter where you are. No matter what’s going on around you. No matter what is pulling your attention or competing for space in your mind. May these next few minutes offer you rest, peace, and hope.

Hope Ep. 33 - December 27, 2025

Alexandra Villasante, author of Fireblooms (Nancy Paulsen Books), shares what is giving her hope today: stopping and looking in community.

Listen along:

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

AAn 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.

Transcript:

Alexandra: "What's giving 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 things that are giving me hope is just a wonderful exercise.

And the thing I came up with, and there are a few, but this one I honed in on was comunidad, community. And I use that word with intentionality because I know that sometimes it is co-opted by corporations. You know, you might have your cell phone company calling you part of their community. 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 comunidad 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 comunidad that really works together to do those three things of mutual aid, the amplification, lifting up of others, and to be in discourse cuz we have to continue to talk about the things that impact our lives, kids' lives, our society. That work of discourse doesn't end and it shouldn't end because we are trying to make the longest mesa, the longest table possible to include everyone. That's what comunidad is."