Anna Frost is a Teen Fiction (YA) author of novels set in ancient Japan. This Monday July 8th, check out our interview and discussion about writing Japanese culture as a French Canadian, why fantasy authors so often favour a Western Medieval world context for their novels, cultural awareness and the dangers of writing about a culture that is not one’s own, myth, writing queer/ LGBTQ characters, and exploring trans characters.

Here are a few teasers for our upcoming interview:

Anna Frost: “It takes effort to use a different culture as the base and even more efforts to spin out a story that is respectful of the model culture. People may also be afraid they’ll make offensive mistakes.”

Anna Frost: “LGBTQ books currently represent less than 1% of new YA books coming out every year. I’m sure this number will grow as society continues to shift in favor of equal rights. “

Anna Frost: “That’s a tough question because it would never occur to me NOT to have LGBTQ characters in my work. It’s simply part of my worldview.”

Anna Frost: “My favorite fantasy books are the ones where being gay is roughly as strange as preferring white chocolate over milk/dark chocolate.”

Check out our upcoming interview to see some of Anna Frost’s tips on how to avoid cultural and sexual stereotypes and create strong, realistic, deep characters. If you are not familiar with her work, you can explore my review of Anna Frost’s The Fox’s Mask at https://speculatingcanada.wordpress.com/2013/06/28/transformations/ , and you can explore her novels at http://musapublishing.com/index.php?main_page=index&manufacturers_id=180 .