Alexia Casale's YA novel, Not That Kind of Hero
About Author
Alexia Casale introduces her new YA novel, Not That Kind of Hero, a story about following your dreams.
British-American citizen of Italian heritage, Alexia Casale is an author, writing consultant and teacher living in Buckinghamshire. She has a PhD and teaching qualification. Her career has ranged from working on an award-winning Broadway show in New York to being director of YA Shot: a young adult and children's literature festival with a large outreach programme.
Her books have received multiple awards nominations and include The Bone Dragon and Sing if You Can't Dance for YA readers.
Interview
Alexia Casale introduces her new YA novel, Not That Kind of Hero (Faber YA)
April 2025
When Orla is persuaded to apply for a short drama course, and is accepted, she's reluctant to take part; there's the rent to pay, younger siblings to look after and the past to avoid. But drama has always been something she has loved; should she follow her dream and take part in the course?
Not That Kind of Hero is a page-turning story about how to follow our dreams, sidekick versus superheroes, romance and the importance of family and chosen family. ReadingZone spoke with author Alexia Casale to find out more!
Review: "An empowering read that challenges the conventional ideas of heroism." Read a chapter from Not That Kind of Hero
Q&A with Alexia Casale
"I want to do everything possible to help people become happier, healthier and more empathetic
- and what could be a more fun way of achieving that than through stories?"
1. Can you tell us a little about yourself; what brought you into writing for young people and what does a day in your writing life look like? Do you do other kinds of work, too? What have been your career highlights to date?
Writing has been my big dream since before I can remember. The journey started badly, though, as I'm dyslexic, dyspraxic and ADHD and couldn't learn to read, let alone write. But with a lot of extra tutoring (thank you, Mrs Cooke!) I got there… and eventually (emphasis on the eventually) I got published. Now the challenge is to keep getting published, so I'm still learning all I can about the craft of fiction-writing and working as hard as ever - and that's what a day in the writing life looks like for me.
Sometimes I spend more time on my university job (I have the great honour of leading the renowned MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University) and some days I'm doing publicity and some days writing or editing a new book, but mostly it's a bit of everything (usually a bit too much at that). But I wouldn't change it because I always knew I'd basically be happy if I could be a writer, and now I am - and I am.
Career highlights include speaking at the Hay Festival (I was so ill I barely remember it), Edinburgh Festival, going to the Jugendliteraturpreis ceremony in Germany for my debut, and the Waterstones Children's Book Prize shortlisting. Most recently it's being shortlisted for the Southern Schools Book Award: so many children and teens read my book and wrote the most amazing reviews - what could possibly be better than that?
2. What happens in your new YA novel, Not That Kind of Hero? Does it link to your earlier novel, Sing If You Can't Dance?
Not That Kind of Hero is a spin-off from Sing If You Can't Dance, but it's a standalone so you don't have to read Sing first. If you have read Sing, you'll recognise some familiar characters in Hero, but the focus is on Orla and her theatrical adventures.
Orla is a born sidekick and glad of it: being there for her friends and family is her big goal in life. The trouble with being a sidekick is that you end up doing a lot of stuff you're not thrilled about to please others - in Orla's case, this includes applying for a scholarship to a prestigious drama intensive during the Christmas holidays, even though she knows she won't get it and isn't sure she wants it. But when, against all odds, she wins the scholarship, it's too big an opportunity to pass up.
Suddenly she's centre stage, getting to try out the limelight. But everyone else on the intensive has done loads of fancy training, whereas Orla's only done a few school plays. Then there's Cassian, with his movie-star good looks and his endless flirting. The intensive means Orla's too busy to help her family pay the rent, but she still has to help out at home on top of homework and making friends, let alone exploring things with Cass…
Will she manage to juggle her chance at the spotlight and her responsibilities as a sidekick, or will it all come crashing down?
3. What was the initial idea or theme you wanted to explore in the novel and how did it develop into Not That Kind of Hero?
The idea that everyone has to 'have a dream', know what it is when they're a teenager, and pursue it at all costs is so unhealthy. I wanted to write a book that challenged all the rubbish and unrealistic messages about dreams that are embedded in current culture.
It's OK not to have a dream - especially when you're still a teenager. It's far better to embrace opportunities then use them to find a dream that's a good fit for you than to set your mind on something before you're ready. Taking a while to find your dream often means you have exciting experiences that later shape the dream, ensuring you have loads to bring to the table once you finally know what you want to achieve.
Equally, it's fine to have a dream right from the start that you can't let go. I was that kid and I am that adult. What isn't healthy, though, is thinking that anything that delays you or complicates your journey to your dream is inherently bad. Life is more than just one dream, no matter how big - it's also friends, family, other smaller ambitions… Plus speed isn't necessarily the best thing for your dream. The detours you take on your way often end up being what's special about how you realise your dream. I always wanted to be a writer, but the fact it was difficult and took a long time meant that I took opportunities to work in the theatre - without them I couldn't have written this book.
I don't have a message to offer, but if finding/chasing your dream means you are aspiring miserably, you might do well to think again. Because surely the goal should be to aspire happily, otherwise what's the point?
4. Not That Kind of Hero explores how the different characters follow their dreams. Why did you decide to challenge Orla through her love of drama, with a two-week drama placement?
I've been a theatre consultant since my teens thanks to finding myself in the right place at the right time with something valuable to say. After university, I moved to New York and worked on a Tony-award-winning Broadway show. These experiences always felt like such a rich thing to feed into a book - I just had to find the right one!
Orla's story was the perfect fit as the theatrical setting couldn't have been more suited to exploring themes around what it means to be a hero or sidekick, and the challenges and joys of chasing/finding your dream. Putting Orla literally centre-stage and in the spotlight was the best way to challenge her to the max so she (and the reader) could go on the biggest journey possible. Plus it offered so many opportunities for humour!
5. Why did you want to focus on Orla, a character who sees herself as a 'sidekick', not the hero? And why did you frame how she sees herself in this way?
When I was talking to my editor and agent about which character should be the focus of the spin-off to Sing, everyone assumed it would be Roks. But Orla's was the story I really felt I had to tell. She's so different from Ven and Roks - they're the classic hero types so many stories revolve around, whereas I don't think I've read a story quite like Orla's before.
Ven's story in Sing felt new to me because it's so rare to see a protagonist with a physical disability, particularly a mobility issue, much less a variable condition that worsens during the book without the character dying. More even than that, such characters don't get the 'off into the sunset' moment so common in romcoms, so writing a character who did (literally on the cover!) meant I was adding something to all the wonderful stories out there.
For me, Orla's story is similarly unusual in its own very different way. She's a classic sidekick, but in this book she gets to be the protagonist. Orla's hung up on ideas about what makes a hero versus a sidekick, but in the end she grows to understand that the really important thing is whether she's happy with the life she's living.
6. Not That Kind of Hero also shines a light on the challenges for those from difficult socio-economic backgrounds in entering the Arts. Is this something you feel strongly about?
The Arts - literature, painting, theatre, film and TV, videogame design, poetry - are impoverished if only one sort of person is telling the story and creating the beauty. There are lots of diversity schemes out there now, and that's great, but publishing has yet to solve its biggest challenge - the impact of money.
Working in the Arts, especially as a creative, means taking on a career path that's rarely straightforward, where your income is often incredibly unpredictable. If you have money to fall back on, you can keep going when times are tough. You can also access all sorts of extra opportunities to learn and develop. Money doesn't make you talented but it allows you time, space, paid support to hone your talent.
YAShot - a young adult literature festival I ran for several years before Covid changed the festival landscape forever - was created to provide lots of different people lots of different chances to engage with publishing, books and writing. People could buy tickets for the festival to give away to young readers, while the tickets themselves paid for authors to visit disadvantaged schools in the months after the festival.
There was also an internship/mentoring scheme where young adults could work with me and the rest of the team online, in a flexible way to start gaining some knowledge of the publishing industry - and also a reference. I'm so proud that quite a lot of those people went on to get careers in publishing. They might well have done anyway, because they were all brilliant, but I hope, if nothing else, YAShot showed them they were welcome.
All of these things fed into the book and shaped how I portrayed the intensive, but also how I tried to show that Orla's experiences and challenges created insights that the others didn't have, despite all their training.
7. We learn that Orla and her family have escaped domestic violence. Why did you develop that as part of Orla's story, and how did you research it and approach writing about it?
Before my current university job, I spent twelve years working as a specialist non-fiction human rights editor specialising in prevention of torture and male violence against women and girls. This work fed into my adult debut, The Best Way to Bury Your Husband, but Sing and Hero gave me an opportunity to explore these issues in YA through Roks and Orla.
Too many books, films and TV shows contain gratuitous graphic violence that puts the focus on the violence and the perpetrator not on the victims or the impact of violence. In my books, I try to show only what is absolutely necessary to understand the story and the characters. Often this means very short scenes or, ideally, just a handful of flashbulb moments.
By withholding everything else, I force readers to imagine the rest; as a result, it becomes more real in their minds than if I'd just put everything on the page. This, in turn, means that instead of having a bunch of facts about exactly what the characters have been through, the reader has their own imaginings and emotions that they have raised. In other words, by saying as little as possible, I force the reader into a more vicarious experience of what it feels like to be in the situation. However, those who know what it's like find emotionally-authentic representation offers a sense of comfort - or at least recognition - whereas specific details of violent acts are often both similar and different enough to activate traumatic memories.
This trauma-informed approach increases empathy and understanding for readers who haven't experienced violence while protecting those who have from unnecessary upset. It also puts the focus where it should be - on the consequences of violence rather than centring violent acts and those who commit them.
8. Can you tell us about the ghostly Grace at the theatre, and why you decided to bring her into Orla's orbit?
All the best theatres have at least one ghost! To begin with, it just seemed a fun, natural thing to include… but then I realised it was the missing piece of the puzzle in terms of writing about Orla's past without showing anything too graphic.
Orla's growing understanding of Grace is part of her own grappling with the fact that she's never dealt with the trauma of her father's violence. She's not living that life now, but being away from her father and his violence doesn't mean the trauma no longer has any power over her. We are all haunted by the past in one way or another - Grace offered me a tangible way to this without having to include graphic flashbacks to Orla's past.
She's also just a lot of fun! Who doesn't love a theatre ghost?
9. Other than a great story, what would you like your readers to take from Orla's experiences and the questions she asks in Not That Kind of Hero, as well as your questions at the end of the novel?
I am passionate about both teaching and the ways reading increases empathy. Encouraging readers to think beyond the book is a way to wring the maximum potential for empathy development from the story… Not to mention that engaged readers tend to keep reading, which brings with it a host of benefits from physical and mental wellbeing to career satisfaction and even a higher income on average! I want to do everything possible to help people become happier, healthier and more empathetic - and what could be a more fun way of achieving that than through stories!
I also just really love talking about books, so this was a way to start some new conversations. One of my favourite parts of my role at Bath Spa University has been co-founding Literature across Borders with the amazing Meghaa Gupta, a renowned Indian children's author and consultant. The project is all about helping children's books - and conversations around them - to travel across borders to encourage truly wide-ranging empathy and positive values around multiculturalism.
10. Given your other role as course director of the MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University, what are your top tips for young people who want to develop their writing skills?
Write! Write as much as you can and don't worry about it being good - yet. You get good by practising. You wouldn't expect to play a piano piece through for the very first time at a big concert, so why would you expect your writing to be great when you start? I always tell my students that they shouldn't worry about writing well until they've written at least a million words. You might not need that many, but you'll need a whole lot. So get going if you want to be a writer… and gradually you'll get better… and better…
Also read as much as possible, and as widely as possible. And if you have any friends who like to write, then share your writing with each other. My students learn from showing their work to tutors and peers in order to get feedback about how to improve. It's easier to see problems in a story that's not your own, but as you help other writers solve their story problems, you learn how to solve more of your own. However, even published authors never stop needing feedback - my books are so much better for the input of my agent and editors.
So read, write, have fun and don't waste time worrying about how quickly you'll get there. The detours will make your life - and your writing - so much more interesting than if your path were quick and simple.
Not That Kind Of Hero: A heart-stopping teen romance
