Q&A with Vesper Stamper

Vesper Stamper is the author of What the Night Sings, a Morris Award finalist, longlisted for the National Book Award, and winner of the Sydney Taylor Award. In her sophomore novel, A Cloud of Outrageous Blue, a young woman paves her own path and falls in love during the Great Plague of 1348. We talked with Vesper about writing historical fiction, how her book connects to our current times, and the joy she finds in connecting with young readers.

In your last book, you explored the topic of the Holocaust and surviving Nazi Germany and its aftermath as a Jewish person. This book is about a medieval plague. Why do you gravitate toward historical fiction?

History is just the story of human choices, and how those choices intersect. We often learn in school that it’s all about the power plays of those at the top, but the fact is that we are living in a story right now that will one day be part of “history.” That’s just as true of a hidden life like Edyth Le Sherman’s in A Cloud of Outrageous Blue as it is of yours or mine. The little choices we make can have extraordinary effects. That’s what interests me: how one unknown person—like you or me—takes ownership over our own life and choices in times of extraordinary pressure.