Author Kayla Hardy on "The Quarter Queen," her debut historical fantasy reimagining Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, and her rebellious daughter, Ree.
Voodoo queens, secret societies, and the mother-daughter bond that can make or break a family. For National Book Month, Kayla Hardy joins Big Blend Radio’s "Books & Authors" with Books Forward, to talk about The Quarter Queen, a lush, richly researched story of two generations of powerful women in a magically and racially divided 1840s New Orleans.
In the novel, Ree finds her formidable mother, Marie, comatose in the bayou and has to uncover the secrets of Marie’s past to save her. Enemies are circling, including a puritanical Brotherhood of alchemists, the slaveholding mayor of the city, and Ree’s childhood best friend turned witch hunter.
In this conversation, Kayla talks about:
- Growing up between Ohio and Louisiana Creole country, and how childhood summers hooked her on Marie Laveau
- Why slavery itself, the system, is the true villain of the book
- Voodoo’s blend with Catholicism: magic, psychology, or both?
- The Brotherhood’s obsession with purity, secret societies, and alchemy
- Ree’s coming-of-age and mothers and daughters seeing each other as whole people
- Her years of writing and querying before the book deal, and how a TV pilot became a novel
Kayla Hardy is a mythology expert and multi-hyphenate author and screenwriter of Louisiana Creole descent. She earned her PhD in creative writing and African American literature from SUNY Binghamton University, where she is an adjunct professor and an accomplished scholar of Black folklore, mythology, and Voodoo. "The Quarter Queen" (Ballantine) is her first novel, named an Essence Most Anticipated Book of 2026 and a Book Riot Best New Book of March.
Kayla Hardy’s website: https://KaylaHardy.com
Books Forward: https://BooksForward.com/
Big Blend Media House: https://www.BigBlendMediaHouse.com
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