Move over, Harry Potter and Rumpelstiltskin! Maine author George Jreije’s debut fantasy novel is all about alchemy.

Interview By Natalie Foster

Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

Typically, you talk to a writer and they’ll tell you about how they grew up loving books and reading and writing, but my writing journey began mid-college. I’d just read a novel that I loved, and that voice in my head said, “Hey, I can do this!” But it turned out I was wrong. Everybody will tell you, those first few manuscripts—we don’t talk about those. Five years later, I said, I’m going to try to write  a middle-grade book. I really like this age category, but you see so many middle-grade fantasies, and I wanted to do something original. I’m an Arab-American. I have Lebanese citizenship. I lived in Lebanon for a few years, and I speak fluent Arabic. I was like, what part of my culture can I draw from that’ll be unique in this book? And I thought, no one’s really done anything with alchemy, even though it’s one of the original magic systems in the world and the precursor to science itself. Being that it was so prevalent in the Middle East and in the region I grew up in, I said, all right, I’m going to write an Arabic character who becomes an alchemist. Shad is in many respects a reflection of who I was at twelve years old. 

Read the full story in the digital magazine above.