The Queen's Apprenticeship in Spanish, and The War Within Me forthcoming

By Tracy Ryan

Back in late 2023, I posted about my first historical novel (my sixth novel, but first in that genre), The Queen's Apprenticeship, being published with Transit Lounge. It intertwines the third-person narrative of a real-life figure, Marguerite de Navarre, with that of a completely imagined character from a very different background whose first-person tale Marguerite is reading, embedding one story within the other...

In late 2024, the Spanish edition of that novel appeared with Ediciones Maeva, for any of you who read Spanish — or know somebody who does, and who might like historical fiction set in sixteenth-century France. It's translated by Carlos Milla and Isabel Ferrer. 

Cover design by Opalworks Barcelona

I already loved the Transit Lounge cover featuring a portrait of Marguerite de Navarre — I'm just as taken with the very different Spanish one, bringing together as it does the two protagonists, one a privileged royal woman and the other a young printer's apprentice named Jehane/Josse (there are identity changes through Jehane/Josse's story).

I'm excited to say that in June this year the next book, Book Two in my Queens of Navarre trilogy will also be appearing with Transit Lounge — The War Within Me.

This second historical novel takes up the story of Marguerite's daughter, Jeanne d'Albret — it's not a biography, but "biographical historical fiction" following her journey from childhood through to the French Wars of Religion (Civil Wars) in the latter half of the sixteenth century.

Here is a cover preview of The War Within Me: 

Cover design by Peter Lo, using a portrait of Jeanne
by an artist of the school of François Clouet

Though readers of the first novel will find connections in this one, it's able to be read as a standalone.

Book Three is still to come! That is the story of Marguerite de Valois ("Queen Margot"), the next Queen of Navarre.

Rachel Watts recently reviewed the first novel in Westerly online.

Other responses to Book 1, The Queen's Apprenticeship:

"a triumphant foray into historical fiction… a compelling exploration of patriarchy, privilege and resistance in Renaissance France, set amid a vividly sketched milieu … with convincing fictional characters."

— Cheryl Akle, The Australian

"the brilliant depth of character we want when reading historical fiction … a buoyancy of storytelling." — Jessie Tu, Sydney Morning Herald

Against the Ongoing Genocide in Gaza

Graphology Superscription 142: genocide phase 2 Gaza

 

The thin stretch of land Gazan Palestinians

have called home is more than a ‘sea view’.

 

But complicated by rubble and the odour of death,

the US will help decorate the guilty reminders.

 

And though it might be deft to say Trump’s

declarations are a real estate developer’s

 

sense of land-usage, of the profit

that will come from a glossy future,

 

it’s actually far more devious than going

eighteen holes (ready-formed by shell-

 

craters). In the sweeping aside of logger-

head turtles and jackals, in ensuring

 

contracts for Americans who make so many

of the weapons that have reshaped the past,

 

the endgame policies are energised

to drive the people out, to win history.

 

 

            John Kinsella

 

Against Antisemitism

As someone who campaigns against all violence and for those suffering in Gaza (and other zones of violence), I am appalled by the attacks on synagogues in Australia. Deeply, deeply appalled. Some of you might have read my On the Outskirts collection with poems such as 'Denkmal' which try to challenge antisemitism across history. The conflating of 'Jew' with the Israeli military/govt is fundamentally wrong (it is supported by WASP America etc, what’s more) and is a typical and toxic bigotry come of an unwillingness to analyse closely. Anyway, this is not my point. My point is that as someone who tries to speak out against injustice, I feel I must speak about and against these attacks. 

Graphology Superscription 136

I call from the haze of illness

to the perpetrators of hate against Jews

in Sydney and Melbourne, I call across

the continent to those who have lost

their way by substituting the actions 

of government and military for the lives

of those who would worship in peace, 

who are not wielding weapons. You

will define prayer as you define prayer,

you will make arguments of association

and excuse or seek to legitimise

your cause of DNA and deculturism.

You have blamed and judged and held

responsible and converted your rage

to hate or, most likely, you have simply found a way

to express your deeply entrenched antisemitism

while denying it’s that, or not. I address 

the perpetrators, I address those who have 

lost their way and shifted blame in the signs 

of Nazism while deploying Brown Shirt tactics,

those who search for symbols and accelerants 

to focus their own violence, their own anger

that has been dislodged from compassion,

making one place stand for another,

burning the holy as others have burnt

the holy, and reasoning that it is justifiable.

It is not. It never was. You operate by stealth

lodged in your hoodies, you speak among

yourselves to justify your racism, your bigotry,

and you turn your backs on all the suffering

in all places. You’ve tapped into violence

begets violence to use as an excuse, an action,

when your hatred makes and undoes

history by unequal, bloody measures.

John Kinsella