Alix E. Harrow is a former academic, adjunct, cashier, blueberry harvester, and proud Kentuckian who now writes full-time in Virginia, where she lives with her husband and their semi-feral children. She’s the Hugo Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January, The Once and Future Witches, the Fractured Fables duology, Starling House, and numerous short stories. Her next novel, The Everlasting, releases on October 28, 2025. 

Tell us about The Everlasting. What was your inspiration for the story?

Inspiration never strikes, like lightning–it accretes, like barnacles. The Everlasting has been accreting in the back of my brain since middle school, when I first read  all those girl-with-a-sword books: The Song of the Lioness, Crown Duel, The Blue Sword, Sabriel. I read and re-read them, obsessed without totally understanding why. It was the misty, romantic medievalism of the setting, I guess, and the subtextually queer appeal of a woman in armor. And a kind of mythic heroism which seemed illicit and fantastic, even at the height of 90s girl power.

But the romantic medieval image of the knight can’t survive contact with a history degree. This book is a product of the tension between knights as they existed in my childhood imagination (noble, loyal, heroic, hot), and knights as they actually were (violent enforcers of state power, deployed later as propaganda).

The Everlasting blends historical legend with time travel, what drew you to this device?

Obviously time travel lets you play with myth-making and history in some fun ways, but I only realized later how inherently optimistic time travel is as a device. I think in a story this violent and grim and dark, time travel was my way of whispering to the reader (and myself) that it didn’t have to be this way, that the future wasn’t fixed.

What drew you to this time in history? Did you have an encounter with Arthurian stories that prompted it?

I’m not sure I can even remember my first encounter with Arthuriana. It definitely wasn’t anything legit or “original” (quotes to indicate my deep suspicion of the concept of originalism in the context of folklore and mythology). It was more the watered-down second-hand American impression of King Arthur. You know–The Sword in the Stone, Quest for Camelot, those T.A. Barron books. And in some ways that’s what drew me: not the stories themselves, but our distortions of them.

Your previous novels often feature intricate world-building and immersive settings. How did you approach building this world and its history?

Warily!! I’d never actually created a fully secondary world before, and working without the comfort of actual history was terrifying. In the end it took just as much research as historical fiction, except that I got to roam more widely. I could read about the deployment of Joan of Arc in Vichy France and the experiences of Antonio de Erauso (trans ex-nun, conquistador), and the use of medieval imagery in the Confederate South, and it was all equally relevant.

What are some of your favorite books that blend history and fantasy?

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is, obviously. More recently, Shelley Parker-Chan’s queered reimagining of the rise of the Ming Dynasty, She Who Became the Sun, and Lee Mandelo’s 1920s eastern Kentucky horror novella, The Woods All Black.

If you could meet one of your characters outside of the page, who would it be and why?

I keep writing acerbic middle-aged professors. Subconscious nostalgia for college, maybe?? Anyway, I’d love to take a class with Professor Sawbridge.

If you could co-write a book with any author (living or dead) who would it be?

I would never presume to co-write, but I think I would have made a great secretary for Sylvia Townsend Warner. Fetching tea, arranging cut flowers from the garden, corresponding with the anarchists, hexing enemies, etc.

What is your ideal fall reading (or writing!) setting?

By the woodstove! My kids and I like to pile the couch cushions as close as we can before my husband shouts at us, and read until we’re all sort of pink and over-warm.

What are you currently reading?

I’m re-reading Leigh Bardugo’s Crooked Kingdom, which is exactly as quippy and brilliant as I remembered, and just finished Olivie Blake’s decadently decayed Dreamland.

What are you currently watching?

The thing about having a nine year old boy is that you are always, always watching soccer. Literally as I type this I’m up late watching the LAFC game so I can report faithfully in the morning. Son just scored.

What are you currently listening to? (podcast, audiobook, music)

The other thing about having a nine year old is that you are always, always listening to the Kpop Demon Hunters soundtrack.

What are you working on next?

I have a short story collection coming out next year! It’s been…humbling, to revisit writing that’s almost a decade old, and delightful to experiment with new short pieces. I’m (tentatively, suspiciously) a little proud of it?

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow

From New York Times bestselling author Alix E. Harrow comes a sweeping, time-bending love story between a fallen scholar and the legendary knight he’s sent to save. Centuries after Sir Una Everlasting’s heroic death, Owen Mallory travels back in time to ensure her destiny unfolds as history remembers it—even if it breaks his heart. But as they become entangled across timelines, Owen and Una must defy fate itself to rewrite her story—and history along with it.

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