Rory Power Books In Order

Publication Order of Argyrosi Books

Publication Order of Wilder Girls Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Anthologies

Author Rory Power grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, and got her undergraduate degree at Middlebury College. She got her MA in prose fiction from the University of East Anglia. She thinks fondly of her time here, in part due to the fact that she learned a ton, but mainly because there were a bunch of bunnies on the campus.

She lives in New England and works as a crime fiction editor and story consultant for adapting books in television programs.

Rory began writing seriously in the year 2015, starting with a draft of “Wilder Girls” that was disastrous. It was in a different perspective and would have been interesting to no one but Rory herself. After she spent a year in graduate school, focusing on other things before going back to the story and starting from scratch. She kept only the first scene and the main idea, but trashed just about everything else.

Rory has an unhealthy attachment to her Spotify, as well as her Twitter. She wishes she could be an advocate for dogs, which is her dream job. She used to be an editorial assistant, and is a champion at Friends trivia. She is also a sandwich aficionados out there.

The more she writes, the more she sees that she loves outlining, as well as throwing her outline away. She also likes to revise by starting over at the beginning each time. Before she puts a single word down, she has to know what the setting is that she will be working with. It is not necessary for her to know her characters or plot before she begins writing, just the setting and atmosphere have to be figured out.

For Rory, setting is what she loves most, and the landscape is something that inspires her the most. It is the thing she starts with and the thing she returns to. Her primary inspiration for “Wilder Girls” was a visit she made in the year 2015 to Harkers Island in North Carolina. Immediately, she knew it was something that she wanted to write about in some way. The island in “Wilder Girls” was set much further north, in the end, and it looks a tad different, but it is still rooted in that initial inspiration she had. As a tribute, she gave one of her characters the last name Harker.

One of the toughest things for Power to do was convey all the research and science through the perspective of a teen. The reader has to learn all about the girls’ disease through Hetty. She had a lot she wanted to include into things, but she had to be conscious of what Hetty would actually have reason to discover, and the things she would truly care about.

It required her needing to cut quite a few scenes, despite them being interesting to Power or they gave her a chance to use some information she learned through research. It was either not vital to the story, or it was not something Hetty would really be able to learn.

Jeff VanderMeer’s novel, “Annihilation” inspired her while writing her debut. When she first read it, she had written a first draft of the novel, but was not sure what it was or what she could do it. Reading the novel showed her a whole other type of fiction that she had never discovered before, and showed her what she could turn “Wilder Girls” into. Jeff’s work has taught Rory so much about writing.

Another novel that inspired her was Nova Ren Suma’s “The Walls Around Us”. The voice used in the book is stunningly well done, and gave Rory confidence to write “Wilder Girls” exactly how she wanted to write it.

She hopes that readers will see themselves in each of the three characters: Reese, Byat, and Hetty. They are messy, complex, and they all have an ugliness in them that are not always allowed in girls. It is something she wanted to represent on paper, and it is something that she hopes readers are going to find catharsis and understanding in.

Despite relating to Reese the most, Rory finds there is a bit of herself in all three characters. Byatt and Rory are both terrible, and Hetty and her are both recklessly loyal to her friends. Reese is just as angry as Rory felt when she was the same age, and both have a complex relationship with expressing emotion. These are things that she wanted to take from her own experiences and put on paper.

The biggest takeaway she hopes readers have with her book is the idea that girls should be allowed to be as lost and complex as anyone else is. The expectation, she feels, is for girls to make themselves fit for the public’s consumption outside and in, make themselves pretty. She wants anyone who reads the novel to leave the story feeling the expectation a tad less.

Her debut novel, “Wilder Girls”, was released in the year 2019. She writes young adult fiction.

“Wilder Girls” is the first stand alone novel, which was released in the year 2019. Everybody loses something to the Tox. Reese’s hand has changed, Hetty lost her eye, and Byatt disappeared entirely.

It has been a year and a half since the Raxter School for Girls was put into quarantine. The Tox made students savage and strange, with each of the teachers dying off one by one. After having been cut off from the mainland, the girls do not dare wander past the school’s fence where the Tox has made the woods dangerous and wild. They wait for the cure while the Tox takes; with their bodies becoming foreign and sick, things bursting out of them, and pieces missing.

Byatt goes missing, and Hetty is willing to do anything it takes to find her best buddy. Even if it means breaking quarantine and braving all of the horrors that lie in the wilderness just outside of the fence. While she digs deeper, she finds out some disturbing truths about her school and what else lives on Raxter Island. As well as the cure not really be any cure at all.