Two Covers

A little preview of what’s to come….

The countdown begins! Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power will be published in 3 months. The launch date for the Bloomsbury edition in the UK is May 7, 2023. Farrar, Straus and Giroux is bringing out the US edition in August. I thought I’d give you a sneak peak of both covers.

Bloomsbury’s cover on the left and FSG’s on the right

Different countries, different markets, and very different covers. The UK cover captures a certain modernity I aspired to in the narrative; the US one aims for drama, the black background evoking Catherine de’ Medici’s favorite color. Both covers communicate the shared story I wanted to create. The UK version gives us a group snapshot of the three queens, while the US cover uses pearls to join them together, intertwining them, yet still suggesting a hierarchy with Catherine on top, Mary, Queen of Scots at the bottom, and Elisabeth de Valois bridging them in the middle. There is no accident to those pearls, that hierarchy, or to that intertwining, as it happens. You’ll have to read to find out more!

I am so grateful to Carmen Balit at Bloomsbury and Na Kim at Farrar, Strauss & Giroux for their stunning creations. As these covers suggest, there are so many ways to read and interpret the history of women: each interprets Young Queens differently from the other, yet both are right.

Here is the description of Young Queens from Amazon.com:

The boldly original, dramatic, intertwined story of three queens exercising power in a world dominated by men.

Orphaned from infancy, Catherine de’ Medici endured a tumultuous childhood. Married to the French king, she was widowed by forty, only to become the power behind the French throne during a period of intense civil strife. In 1546, Catherine gave birth to a daughter, Elisabeth de Valois, who would become Queen of Spain. Two years later, Catherine welcomed to her nursery the beguiling young Mary Queen of Scots, who would later become her daughter-in-law.

Together, Catherine, Elisabeth, and Mary lived through the sea changes that transformed sixteenth-century Europe, a time of expanding empires, religious discord, and populist revolt, as concepts of nationhood began to emerge and ideas of sovereignty inched closer to absolutism. They would learn that to rule as a queen was to wage a constant war against the deeply entrenched misogyny of their time.

Following the intertwined stories of the three women from girlhood through young adulthood, Leah Redmond Chang's Young Queens paints a picture of a world in which a woman could wield power at the highest level yet remain at the mercy of the state, her body serving as the currency of empire and dynasty, sacrificed to the will of husband, family, kingdom.

You can pre-order the Bloomsbury edition directly from Bloomsbury or from Amazon.co.uk. In the US, pre-orders are available from FSG and from Amazon, through Indiebound, or from wherever you like to order your books.

There are still a few things to finish before Young Queens ventures out into the world. But now the launch date seems very real. I, for one, can’t wait to hold it in my hands!