凯西·麦奎斯顿

Casey McQuiston (born January 21, 1991) is an American author of romance novels in the new adult fiction genre, best known for their New York Times best-selling debut novel Red, White & Royal Blue, in which the son of America's first female president falls in love with a prince of England, and the sapphic book One Last Stop. McQuiston made their debut in the young adult fiction genre with their book I Kissed Shara Wheeler which was released on May 3, 2022. They were included in Time magazine's 2022 Time 100 Next list.

Personal life

McQuiston was born on January 21, 1991 and grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

They attended Louisiana State University and received a degree in journalism. Prior to publishing their first book, they waited tables, freelanced, and worked extensively in magazine publishing. McQuiston previously lived in Fort Collins, Colorado and currently lives in New York City.

McQuiston is queer, non-binary, and uses they/them pronouns. However, some reference books and critical reports list them by their originally assigned pronouns she/her. McQuiston has expressed that they write romantic comedies about queer people because they grew up attending a conservative evangelical Christian school, and they want to write books that would have made them feel less isolated as a queer teenager.

McQuiston has spoken about how ADHD affects their writing, describing the process as "impulse-driven" with scenes often written nonlinearly. After their father's death in 2014 and mental health problems in 2015, McQuiston turned to writing as a way to cope.

Career

McQuiston is currently represented by Sara Megibow at KT Literary. Additionally, they were a 2020 recipient of the Alex Awards for their debut book Red, White & Royal Blue. In November 2023, McQuiston told Out that queer fiction was a "formative experience" for them, allowing them to engage with queerness safely, as a young person and that much of work as an author is "about taking care of that conduit and preserving it" for young queer people "who need it the way I did."

Red, White & Royal Blue

Red, White & Royal Blue is a contemporary queer romance that follows Alex Claremont-Diaz, a fictional First Son of the U.S., as he develops romantic feelings for Henry, an English prince, following an altercation that forces them to fake a friendship for damage control and PR purposes.

McQuiston first came up with the idea for what would become Red, White & Royal Blue in early 2016 as they followed the 2016 American presidential elections. While watching a season of the HBO comedy series Veep and reading both a Hillary Clinton biography by Carl Bernstein, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton, and The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, McQuiston found themself intrigued by the extravagant, high-profile lifestyle of the royals and wanted to write their own take on a story featuring a royal family. Some additional inspirations behind Red, White & Royal Blue include All the Truth is Out by Matt Bai and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.

McQuiston describes Red, White & Royal Blue as a queer romcom and says that they write queer fiction "for the same reason straight people write straight fiction," meaning that they draw from their own experiences. For protagonist Alex's realization that he's bisexual, they were inspired by their own experience. The character of the fictional American president Ellen Claremont in the novel was inspired by American politician Wendy Davis, whose filibuster McQuiston watched and was deeply moved by in 2013.

As part of their research for Red, White & Royal Blue, McQuiston used websites such as whitehousemuseum.org to study both past and present White House interiors that would be incorporated into the novel.

In April 2019, Amazon Studios acquired the film rights to the novel at auction, with Ted Malawer attached as writer and Greg Berlanti as producer.

Red, White & Royal Blue was published by St. Martin's Griffin in May 2019 and debuted on the New York Times Paper Trade Fiction bestseller list, at number 15. It was received favorably by critics, earning a starred review from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, Vogue and Vanity Fair.

It has been published and translated in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Israel, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Sweden, Puerto Rico, Romania, Russia, Spain, Ukraine, and Uruguay.

Red, White & Royal Blue won the Best Debut Novel and Best Romance Novel categories in the 11th Annual Goodreads Choice Awards, making it the only novel to win in two categories in 2019. It was one of New York Public Library's Best Books of 2019.

In interviews, McQuiston has expressed hopes that Red, White & Royal Blue, along with their future novels, will help push queer romance into the spotlight. When asked about their writing process for this book, McQuiston said they knew from the get-go that they wanted to write a queer romance but did not plan out each character before they began writing. For example, while both Henry and Alex are written as cisgender boys, that was not planned from the beginning. Additionally, many of the characters in Red, White & Royal Blue were inspired by different political ideologies and archetypes instead of real-life people. In interviews about this novel, McQuiston likes to say that "no real royals or first families were harmed in the making of this book".

One Last Stop

McQuiston's next book, One Last Stop, came out on June 1, 2021. The book is "pitched as a queer Kate & Leopold, in which a 23-year-old realizes her subway crush is displaced from 1970's Brooklyn, and she must do everything in her power to help her - and try not to fall in love with the girl lost in time - before it's too late." McQuiston was inspired to make the setting of this book on a subway because when using this public transportation you get a glimpse of another person's life.