Finding North: February 2026
Can I talk nerdy to you? 📚
Note: The recording above is a reading of this newsletter — if you haven’t listened before, this might be a fun time to start, and hear me nerding out and getting extra animated about academic stuff!
Hi there! I’m Amie Kaufman, NYT and internationally bestselling author of Red Star Rebels, The Isles of the Gods, Lady’s Knight, and many more. This newsletter is the place to learn about my latest releases or events, and to follow along behind the scenes as I find my way through writing, and through life.
Hi, my friends.
This newsletter feels like a bit of a big swing, but I suspect that if you’ve been reading for a while, you’re the sort of person who’ll find this interesting. Let’s find out!
I come to you from the end of the summer holidays, and my return to longer days at my desk, tucked up in my little office at the bottom of the garden. While drafting this week, I’ve discovered that Wikipedia has a list of “notable dumplings” and researched gravity systems for space stations. Mine is a strange line of work.
In this letter:
An academic theory on what makes a great story (trust me)
A writing update
A movie rec
Tour dates
What I’ve Been Up To
Lately I’ve been immersed in my PhD work. I’m drawing a lot from the book Genre Worlds, by Kim Wilkins, Beth Driscoll, and Lisa Fletcher.
A genre world is, to quote the book, a “hub of activity.” It’s a gathering place for those who create and read books of a particular genre—together they make and appreciate books. When we talk about ‘the YA community’ or ‘the romance community’ or ‘the crime community,’ and in that community we include not just readers, but also writers, publishing people and all who participate, then we’re talking about a genre world.
Stay with me here—I promise this is going to relate to you!
One of the things about a genre world is that there’s certain knowledge that gives you membership. This might be knowledge of tropes in that particular genre (for example, we all know that a detective often shows up to solve a murder mystery, but members of the crime genre world would understand how that detective offers nods to Poirot or Sherlock Holmes) or it might be knowledge of the history of the genre, its evolution, even its scandals.
My work is about the genre world of YA speculative fiction, and the work of women of colour within it—the ways they’re changing it, the reception they’ve met, and so on. It’s really fascinating, inspiring work.
There’s this other part of genre worlds theory that I really love, though, and I want to tell you about it. Wilkins, Driscoll and Fletcher are all very seasoned academics whom I admire deeply, and also enthusiastic readers. They talk about the idea of the academic fan, or the “aca-fan.”
They ask why academics must always have to have a scientific distance from things we study. Can’t we also study things that we love, and acknowledge that on one hand we’re embedded in them, and that can impact how we see them, but on the other hand, we’re embedded in them, and that can make it possible for us to see and know things we could never otherwise access.
They talk, in Genre Worlds, about the idea of the unabashed pleasures of a genre. The stuff that we love the most about it. The reasons we go there. The particular tropes, the set pieces, the moments that we as fans and members of the genre world all recognise.
This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot in my own writing. Sometimes when I’m talking to more seasoned authors, the idea comes up that although a debut novelist’s work may be less technically accomplished (which is truly not an insult—we should all hope that our tenth novel will be better than our first!) the book can still be incredibly compelling.
The reason for this, as a reader, is that the debut novelist is writing with their whole heart. They’re not thinking ‘I can’t, that’s been done before’ or ‘that’s too tropey, too much.’ They’re just writing what they love.
Sometimes, as authors continue to write, they can hold themselves back from writing what they love because they feel a pressure to be original, or different, or what they perceive to be more clever, even at the expense of the ‘unabashed pleasures of the genre’ that drew them in in the first place.
To that, I would say that people have been telling stories around campfires since we’ve had both language and campfires. Nothing is original! It’s all in the telling. And indeed, we come back to stories because we want to see a new spin on something we already love.
The way that I enjoy telling stories is with my whole chest. It’s going enthusiastically into them, and picking up those unabashed, inherent pleasures.
When I was writing Red Star Rebels, some of the pleasures I leaned into were the exploration of a new planet. Being on Mars! A spacesuit breach emergency! Die Hard style fights with mercenaries! An opposites-attract couple strongly considering selling each other out!
As much as I thought about my craft, and the sentence-level construction of the descriptions and the banter, I asked myself about the wholehearted pleasures of this kind of story. Because it’s so much fun to write them! And it’s so much fun to read!
Here’s the first slide from an upcoming instagram post of mine. I’m not pretending Red Star Rebels is different to everything else in its genre. How could it be? Instead, I’m calling out the pleasures of the genre, so that you know what kind of book it is. If you love these, you’ll love this book.
So, this is what I’ve been thinking about this month. How I’ve tried to work the pleasures of particular stories deeply into my books, rather than being too cool for them. I’m working on my next space story right now, and asking myself about the stand-up-and-cheer moments that draw me to a story of its kind, so I can make sure I’m not so clever that I leave them out!
If you’re also into the wholehearted pleasures of my particular book and genre world, then I hope you’ll come join me on Mars.
What I’m Writing
It’s been summer school holidays here in Australia, so I’ve been getting less work done, and instead going to the beach, reading books with my daughter, and making ill-conceived decisions to clear out my wardrobe, which means everything I own is currently on the floor, and of course I’ve run out of steam.
I am drafting my 2027 novel, though, which will once again be set in space, and once again contain a great deal of action, romance and banter. I’m looking forward to telling you more about it later this year.
What I’ve Loved Lately
I saw Rental Family at the cinema recently, and I found it deeply touching. It’s the story of a washed-up American actor who lives in Tokyo, who takes a job playing roles in all kinds of different families. Tokyo’s one of my favourite places, and it was captured so beautifully on the screen, but it was the story itself—wholehearted, immersive, thoughtful and original—that really captured me. Highly recommended.
News and Events
Aussies, I would love to see you in person, this week and next.
You can grab Adelaide tickets here.
You can grab Melbourne tickets here.
You can grab Brisbane tickets here.
And while I have you, I’m wondering if I could ask a quick favour. Could you forward this along to any bookish friends who live in those cities? Because if there’s one thing worse than having your city left off a tour, it’s finding out it was on the tour, and the stop was last night, and you missed it. Which happens literally every time.
If you’re planning to read Red Star Rebels
Then as ever, I will remind you that it would be extremely helpful if you’d consider preordering. Preorders are the best way out there to support the authors you love.
🇺🇸 If you’re in the US, you can find all your preorder links right here.
🇬🇧 If you’re in the UK, you can preorder from Waterstones, Amazon, Blackwell’s, Bookshop, Foyle’s, Hive, or WH Smith.
🇦🇺 If you’re in Australia, you can buy from Dymocks, Booktopia, Readings, Amazon or QBD.
And wherever you live, you can add it as to-read on Goodreads.
That’s it from me for now. I’ll drop back into your inboxes on Red Star Rebels launch day, Feb 10th, to remind you it’s just the perfect time to buy a book. And I’ll be back in March with news of a project I’m wondering if you’d like to be involved in. On that mysterious note, farewell for now!
You can also add Red Star Rebels to your Pagebound and support a much more aesthetic, woman-owned, not controlled by Amazon, app and/or website catalog!
Love this! Off to buy my own copy of GENRE WORLDS!