Walking Through Fire with Novelist, and Santa Barbara Native, Kim DeRose

There’s nothing more satisfying — and sadly quite rare — than reading a book set in Santa Barbara where the author gets the little details about this place just right. Kim DeRose’s new novel, For Girls Who Walk Through Fire, a young-adult (YA) work of fiction that meshes the serious subject of sexual assault with magical manifestations of witchcraft and off-the-charts teenage emotions, accomplishes just that. 

Set in familiar places like Adams Elementary School, Dune Coffee Roasters, Franceschi Park, Paradise Found, and Santa Barbara High (where she gets bonus points for naming the fictional principal after my mother, Mrs. Dinaberg, who was one of her teachers at Roosevelt Elementary School), DeRose has written a powerful story about teen witches who fight back against the people who’ve wronged them, with sometimes unintended, but always entertaining consequences. 

Before I even read the novel (which I now have and can wholeheartedly recommend), I jumped on the chance to interview DeRose, a Santa Barbara native and “Distinguished Don” alumni who currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband, 10-year-old son, and 4-year-old daughter. Here’s a bit of our Zoom conversation. 

How does it feel to have your first novel published?  It’s exciting. It’s surreal. There’s an element of anxiety because when you’ve never done it before, you feel like, “What’s this gonna be like?” But it was my childhood dream. So overall, it’s pretty exciting.

My earliest memory from being a kid is I just knew that I wanted to be a writer. … I think I started dictating stories to my mom when I was 3. She has this piece of paper that’s my earliest story about this family of kittens and the mother that I dictated to her. … I would spend my summers drafting stories in my room when I had free time and illustrating them. When I was in 3rd grade, she signed me up for an after-school writers’ program. And that was fantastic. 

It is amazing how those little things when you’re young have such an impact. As far as writing for young adults, how did that come about?  I just felt that was exactly the right audience that I wanted to write for. … When I was a kid, I didn’t have any concept of who the audience would be; I just knew that I wanted to be a writer. … I was gonna just finish my story and take it over to the bookstore, and they were gonna publish it. And that would be that. I was so convinced. It was probably Chaucer’s I had in mind. [Laughs.]

I think I lost confidence in that along the way. I don’t think it’s uncommon for people that are creative to hear a narrative of, “Oh, it’s not realistic; you’re not going to make money. It’s not a serious thing to take on.” So I think in many ways, it took me a little while to kind of come back to that. And to remember that it’s really something I care about. … YA has always been near and dear to my heart, because it’s just such a cool age. To get to speak to that audience when they’re figuring out so much about themselves and individuating in the world, I just feel like that’s really special and important.

Sexual assault is obviously a very serious subject. Were you conscious of balancing that out with the teenage characters?  I think that’s probably why I’m really drawn to genre and writing about, if you want to call it fantasy or paranormal, but you know, the use of magic. And witches in this case. I think part of the reason I’m really drawn to that is because you can deal with really serious subject matters, but also have this other element that maybe adds a little fun or levity, so that you have a mix of both. … And it allows me to have a balance of things in terms of capturing maybe some humor or fun, that would also be true of that age group. And it’s just also the kind of story that I love. 

A few years ago, the big dream for writers was going on The Oprah Winfrey Show with their book. What’s your big dream today?  I really think the dream, and it’s hard to quantify this, but I feel like the dream is to really connect with readers who feel really seen. Part of why it’s hard to quantify that is the acknowledgement that you might never hear from them, right? I think about all the art that has meant so much to me, and I feel so passionately about, and I’ve never written a review, I’ve never written a letter. I might tell people in my life, but there’s no path back to that creator for them to know. I think that that’s kind of a hard thing to just know that you’re just gonna have to release this and know that people are gonna have this relationship that you might never even be aware of. 

I would say the other part of it is to have little moments of communion with readers and other writers. And those also tend to be kind of small and intimate. So it’s not to diminish any of those big things…. I’ve been a writer long enough to know the value of being a writer, and what that gives me and how that’s so separate from being a published author. And it’s something that I will always have as part of my life because of how it feeds me.

For more information about Kim DeRose and For Girls Who Walk Through Fire (Union Square & Co., September 2023), see kimderose.com.