FS: I know it wasn

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Donna Freitas (FRAY-tus) has carved out a career as a religion scholar focusing on young adults’ spirituality and sexuality ( Sex and the Soul , Oxford). But in her other life, she’s also a YA novelist whose first book, The Possibilities of Sainthood (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), got starred gender and politics reviews pretty much every place that fiction reviews can be starred: PW, SLJ, Booklist, and even snotty old Kirkus.
In her new novel This Gorgeous Game , Donna’s telling a darker story for YA readers. Olivia Peters is a rising high school senior who is stalked by a priest. Although at first she’s flattered by his attention to her writing and his belief in her literary talent, it isn’t long before she realizes that his unwanted attention is inappropriate. But what can a 17-year-old do when her stalker is a famous author and universally beloved Catholic priest?
Donna Freitas: It’s not so much that I decided to follow up my shiny happy novel about a girl looking for her first kiss with a sad novel. For me, writing fiction is more about voice, and following the voice that shows up in your head. Olivia’s voice was the next one to show up, so hers was the story I decided to follow. gender and politics And it happened to be really sad and dark.
FS: The cover is very arresting — Olivia is backed into a corner and seems almost pinned down by the cross. Do you think that it represents what you’re trying to convey in the book about religion? gender and politics
Freitas: I was really stunned when I saw what the publisher came up with for the cover. I couldn’t gender and politics think of a better cover to represent the different layers of the book. They came up with shaping the title and my name into the cross. But to be honest, I think the cover effectively portrays Olivia in the book. I was really gender and politics adamant that there be no hint of a man on the cover. I wanted the cover just to be hers. One of the things I love about that photograph is that it can be interpreted in different ways. She does look like she’s backed into a corner and frightened. But she also could be glaring at you, like she might spring at you. I really love the way they figured out how to represent what she’s going through in the book with the priest gender and politics without putting him on the cover. The cross represents him, and it’s perfect.
FS: I know it wasn’t intentional, but the timing of the novel coincides with some serious struggles the Catholic Church is having with sexual abuse by priests. As a self-described gender and politics Catholic, how are you coping with the Church’s current fiasco? gender and politics
Freitas: I think the only thing that has changed since 2002, when the first wave of abuse was covered by the media, is that the media stopped talking about it for a while. I don’t think the Cat