Rhiannon Wilde: I Am Deeply Interested In Championing Queer Stories
Image: Rhiannon Wilde. Image: Supplied
Self-described as a ‘bubbly bookish bisexual”, Rhiannon Wilde is deeply interested in championing queer stories and believes that being queer underpins her way of viewing the world, the stories she thinks of and the characters that pop into her head when she writes.
When it comes to her writing practice, the themes that she enjoys exploring often stem from a “questioning of the self” and the “defining moments that lead up to and come from it.”
Growing up, Wilde struggled with mental health and was “very closeted”, which meant that she did not have the language to describe her relationship with her sexuality until much later.
Where You Left Us
She describes her latest novel, Where You Left Us, as one that brings her a lot of joy, where she’s able to approach both mental health and queer relationships by including a character with anxiety and exploring a budding romance that occurs between two bisexual girls.
In its earliest forms, Where You Left Us was written as a single perspective from one character before Wilde developed a dynamic between two sisters in the novel and wanted to shed light on the individual journeys that they had.
When asked about the role of vulnerability in storytelling, Wilde shares that she believes it’s “incredibly important when it comes to creating something that feels real” and that if “something feels real, it has the chance to resonate with people who might have felt the same thing.”
Wuthering-Heights-Meets-Evermore
She states that connections between people informs the heart of her work, “be it sisters or first loves or new relationships or very best friends”, and that queerness filters through everything she writes and attaches herself to.
Wilde describes Where You Left Us as a “gothic Wuthering-Heights-meets-Evermore” that focuses on the two Prince sisters (Scarlett and Cinnamon), two romantic interests, one family mystery on a cliff by the sea. The immersion into the Gothic is something that she wanted to try her hand at for a while, and was a creatively different endeavour to her first novel, Henry Hamlet’s Heart.
“I read a lot of Gothic books and obsessed a lot about evoking that signature Gothic feel. I love place as a character, so the Gothic setting ended up feeling very natural and vital as an extension of that for this particular family,” Wilde states.
Wilde is inspired by queer authors including Torrey Peters’, Andrew Sean Greer, Tobias Madden and Nina LaCour. She praises Hannah Kent’s latest novel Devotion, a queer love story that prevails against even the toughest obstacles of religious persecution and Prussian familial restraint, encouraging others to read the book.
She hopes that readers of Where You Left Us will take parts of each sister’s journey away with them, and that they won’t feel like they’re alone during instances of emotional turmoil and struggle.
Where You Left Us by Rhiannon Wilde is out now in bookstores and online. Meet Rhiannon Wilde on October 1 & 2, 2022, at National Young Writers Festival, Newcastle and on October 5, 2022 at Books at Brunch with Tobias Madden, Sydney.
