I loved my chat with author Fiona Davis about her bestselling novel, The Stolen Queen. This is Fiona’s 8^th novel. She didn’t start writing novels until she was 45 and her first national bestseller, The Lions of Fifth Avenue, came out eight years later  when Fiona was 53.  Each of her books is set in a New York City landmark from Radio City Music Hall to The Chelsea Hotel to the New York Public Library. Below is just an edited snippet from our conversation. You can listen to the full episode here on Elena Meets the Author or wherever you listen to podcasts.

 Elena: And for The Stolen Queen, what sparked that story?

But then 10 years later a scholar found that the destruction had to have happened at least 24 years after her death which is a long time to hold a grudge. And they realized, no, it was about the line of succession. The stepson wanted his son to rule and didn’t want the idea of a female pharaoh out in the zeitgeist. So that’s why he did it. Her journey as a woman pharaoh has been fraught in a way that male pharaohs rarely are.

Not only did this book make me want to explore far-flung locales, but it also made me want to consider exploring what’s closer to home, namely The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Fiona’s web site has a scavenger hunt page where several objects mentioned in The Stolen Queen can be found at the Met. It’s quite a fun post-read activity.

My favorite object on the Met scavenger hunt was the Fragment of a Queen’s Face which in the novel is called the Cerulean Queen, linked to a fictional pharaoh Hathorkare who is based on the real life pharaoh Hatshepsut.

Second favorite was the broad collar:

What do you hope readers take away from your book?

If you like going to museums, or even if you don’t like going to museums, the key is to go and look at a museum, like the Met, not as a collection of objects, but as a collection of stories. Get a guide, join a tour, let the experts tell you about these objects. It gives you a much better sense of time, place, where we are now versus what things were like then.

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I am preparing myself. It’s that time of year where we’re all supposed to be jolly and excited for the holidays, where we have to get along even if we’re quietly seething.  Please let’s not get an encore of the fist fight year. I hate to be Bah Humbug, but I wish we could just zoom past them, or at least limit the celebrations to just two tense meals and one festive movie- even that can be contentious – why does one family member get veto rights on both Love Actually and The Holiday?

I’m very polite in my everyday life. I can often be found expressing my gratitude to Chat GPT. I apologize when I’m wrong – I’m sorry my grocery cart knocked you over. Please comes naturally to me, too – But since you’re on the floor, could you please hand me that jar of peanut butter? I don’t know why they put them so low.

But being cheery for several days in a row is depressing.

More broadly, I like to think I’m thankful for my family. Like, I’m thankful my ex-husband isn’t at the Thanksgiving table anymore. There’s a lot of divorce in our family, so holidays are a good time to be grateful for divorce. But compromising on who gets to see which kids and grandkids does get in the way of those gratitude-vibes.

Luckily, I’m very happily married round two. But I am not thankful for how long he can eat Thanksgiving leftovers. By day three I can’t look at another rubbery sweet potato, limp green bean, smooshed brussels sprout or leathery piece of turkey without gagging. There’s a reason we only eat turkey once a year. My husband makes a full plate for lunch every day and eats with gusto. Opposites attract? Not in this case.

I was listening to the news, and a congressman was raising awareness for starving Americans by walking 40 miles. My first thought, and I’m ashamed to admit it, was that’s a lot of steps. Way more than 10,000. And while I feel horribly for those starving people, it didn’t actually make me feel gratitude…More like wishful – I wish I could give them our Thanksgiving leftovers. That would have made me feel grateful on so many levels.

It’s the excess I hate about the holidays. How many presents do I need to buy? How much food do I need to cook (ok order)? How many X-mas cards do I need to send before I can relax, pour a glass of wine, put my feet up and relish the days before NY’s Eve fireworks keep me up?

I used to tell my sister, expect nothing on your birthday and then you won’t be disappointed. She laughed and thought I was being a ridiculous downer. But then she had an underwhelming birthday. Guess who was disappointed?

I’m in my friend Marc’s camp when it comes to holidays. Celebrate that holiday and then move on to normal life as quickly as possible. My husband’s family likes to celebrate any holiday for about five days longer than necessary. That would be six days. They’re a joyous bunch. They start talking about the next holiday as soon as the last one ended.  They actually like each other. Can you imagine?

My kids still haven’t forgiven me for booking flights on December 25^th throughout their childhood. “It’s great! The planes are empty,” I’d tell them.

Christmas is over-rated. Now December 26^th, that’s a great day. But please, let’s keep that on the down low.

November, 2025

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It’s a slim novel of 199 pages, a comic tragedy that reminded me a little of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn.  Both stories involve a cheating husband, a heartbroken wife, but the protagonists are very different. Nora’s protagonist is angry and funny and finds consolation in food and recipes. Katie’s protagonist is watchful, less angry, funny, and finds consolation in stories. The book title Maggie; Or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar makes you think of an old joke. Only when the protagonist walks into a bar, or in this case an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet restaurant with her husband, he tells her he’s having an affair with a white woman named Maggie. Soon after the protagonist discovers she has breast cancer and names the tumor Maggie.

Now divorce, cancer, not such cheery topics, but in Katie’s hands, I kept laughing, not loud, raucous laughter, but more chuckling about the narrator’s relatable observations. She hates the tiny triangular paper cups in the doctor’s waiting room that never hold enough water and the outdated cheesy magazines. She never sees issues of the Atlantic or the New Yorker. Maybe, she muses, because people who read those magazines are too smart to get cancer. She writes ‘The Guide to My Husband: A User’s Manual” and ponders whether she should give it to Maggie, the mistress, not the tumor.

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I am not an adventurous person. I’m curious about the world, but staying alive is very important to me. Taking the subway in Manhattan can be all the thrill seeking I need.

When I met my second husband we were both already in our fifties. When he told me about some of his favorite trips – stalking Grizzly’s in Canada; sailing from Seattle to San Francisco with 25’ waves; and canoeing alongside crocodiles in the Zambezi River, it occurred to me that those three trips would tie for my perfect idea of hell.

About 15 years ago, my friend Melanie went on a safari with her family. She showed me the videos. There were a lot of people screaming and jeeps fleeing stalking animals. Everyone survived. But I decided after seeing that family video that being on a virtual safari was good enough for me. Not a huge loss as safaris have never been on my bucket list.

Until I met my husband. For some reason he was determined to feed me to the lions, I mean, go on safari. I told him the wildlife near our Connecticut home was all the safari I needed. Then we were invited to a close friend’s son’s wedding in Kenya and my husband, like Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon, seized his moment.

“You can’t go to Kenya without going on a safari!”

My friend George once told me that his father died of encephalitis on safari. He was bitten by a Tsetse fly. He was 54.

“Which country?” I had asked.

“Kenya.”

My husband should have been a travel agent in his former life. He loves to plan, sending me multiple calendar invites, way too many for any human to read. I accept them without reading. It’s quicker.  Ditto emails. I’m a professional skimmer.  One day as I was skimming, I spotted the word “hippos” (plural) and the phrase “camping on the riverbank”.

I remember a zookeeper on a zoo tour once calling hippos the cute bad boys of the animal kingdom. Don’t let their come hither looks deceive you. One wrong move and they will take an arm or a leg. That email, I opened. My husband was recommending we stay in a camp on the riverbank to watch the hippos up close.

“It’s very secluded,” he gushed.  “We will have a lot of privacy and a great view of the hippos.”

My reply was concise. “Not happening.”

For some reason I continued to trust my husband after that. But a few weeks before we were due to fly to Nairobi, my son texted late one night:

Are you staying in a tented safari or will there be walls?

“Great question. Walls.” I nudged the man falling asleep in bed next to me, “Our camp has walls, right?” I asked.

“No, tented. It’s in the emails, Elena.” He mumbled before falling asleep.

I felt my stomach tense up. “Tented!” I carefully texted my son.

His reply? “My friends did that. The lions roared all night. They didn’t get any sleep.”

It occurred to me to be angry but in truth, I was relieved. I had the information. Now we just had to book the nearest hotel with walls. Problem solved.

I’m not exactly sure where the communication breakdown happened but fast forward a week and I’m asking my doctor for some Xanax and preparing to stay in a place without walls next to lions. And this was all before I learned about the Black Mamba snake- one bite and arrivederci.

Let’s just say that I didn’t expect to like our trip to the North Mara Conservancy, much less come back alive.

***

I had a question ready to ask as soon as I found someone to ask.

It took two short flights from Nairobi to the North Mara airstrip; a grassy field dotted with jeeps awaiting the next shift. Our two Masai guides Francis and Siparo wore traditional robes and beaten up open-toed sandals. I was wearing boots because I didn’t share in their Black Mamba death wish.

As we got into their Toyota Land Cruiser, I decided to come straight out with my burning question: Excuse me, but do you two carry guns?

“No guns, no spears,” Francis smiled from the driver’s seat, “Only God will help us.”

That was not the answer I was hoping for.

I probed more deeply until I felt better: They’d grown up on the land, been doing this for years and the animals thought of the jeep as a large nonthreatening object, like a tree. The animals were much more interested in finding prey, and they didn’t consider humans prey.

I relaxed a bit and looked around. We were surrounded by wide open grassy plains with the occasional tree and rolling hills in the far distance. The September sun was warm on my face. It felt good. I patted the Xanax in my pocket reassuringly.

We were dropped at the Serian Original Camp, agreeing to meet back up with our guides in the late afternoon. That felt great until they added, to see if we could find some lions.

That first day we left at sunrise traversing the North Mara Conservancy, 80 thousand acres of protected land that border the Serengeti Plains. Only ten other camps had access to this unspoilt, untamed slice of nature. After seeing an abundance of animals … giraffe, gazelle, elephant, it was time for the main attraction and I’m not trying to be funny. The lion sat in the distance, surveying his kingdom, mane wild around his face. I’d never been so happy to be a tree.

After dinner my husband and I were escorted by a staff member carrying a stick and a flashlight to our tented suite. The ensuite tent had running hot water and electricity. There was no WIFI. If we were attacked in the night we’d have to scream.

The zippered tent was built on a platform and had a porch overlooking the Mara River. The rushing water lulled me into a surprisingly deep slumber.

The next day, after a sunrise drive Francis and Siparo set up a table and chairs for us and then laid out a sumptuous buffet on the hood of the jeep- juicy melon, peaches, fresh squeezed juice, homemade granola, jam, toast, hard boiled eggs, and steaming coffee. After making sure nothing was stalking my granola, I began to eat. And somehow eating outside by a stream, shaded by a huge tree was magical.

By sundown cocktails, I was sold. For three days I didn’t think about emails, Instagram, the news, President who? I became obsessed with spotting animals with my binoculars. My world was only the gorgeous landscape and its inhabitants. Fascination trumped fear- learning about animal behaviour- the hierarchy, survival of the fittest, elephants are unpredictable, lionesses do the hunting, giraffes prune all the trees, hyenas are the garbage collectors.

I asked a lot of questions, not about things like how much sedation would stop an attacking buffalo, but questions I wouldn’t normally ask, like: How long will that cub live with its mother? Why are the wildebeest, zebras and gazelles grazing so nonchalantly?

Aren’t they worried about being eaten? How fast can a cheetah run? And even – without a thought for my own survival but purely out of curiosity – Where do the black mambas live?

I even stepped out of the jeep with Siparo, going on walks, keeping a lookout while Francis drove the jeep slowly nearby.

There’s nothing like walking in the wild, my senses were on high alert, noticing every footprint, every rustling in the grass or creature in the distance.

I can’t tell you how relaxing it is to get absorbed in another world, a vital world that is untouched, by man and has its own natural order. My kids texted me after a few days to see how I was doing, was I okay?

I looked around. I was doing okay. I was better than okay. I was stimulated and awe inspired. I had challenged myself at 63 and confirmed that not only was staying alive important to me but so was living.

October, 2025

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 “Cell phones are plot killers,” Virginia told me. “There’s no mystery anymore, no wondering where someone is.”

The Correspondent features a firecracker of a protagonist, 73-year-old Sybil Van Antwerp. Both infuriating and charming, Sybil  is never dull. She  writes letters every day to friends, family, strangers she has come across one way or another as well as authors whose works she admires, including Joan Didion and Kazuo Ishiguro. And Sybil receives many letters back, including fictitiously from Didion (it’s fine if the author is deceased).

A mother, grandmother, divorcee, retiree from a colorful legal career, Sybil now lives alone in a house in Annapolis Maryland. She expects to be coasting through the so-called ‘winter season’ of her life – writing letters, tending to her garden and reading novels. But when disturbing letters from an anonymous source land in Sybil’s mailbox, she is forced to confront secrets that she has tried to long bury.

Turns out Sybil will not be coasting through her winter season. Things start to fall apart and come together in surprising ways. This touching, funny at times,  sad at others,  novel shows that change is possible at any age. This book addresses  long-term regret, the mistakes we invariably make in life and how we deal with them in the long-term.

Below are edited highlights from my conversation with Virginia. You can listen to the full episode here on my podcast Elena Meets the Author or wherever you choose to listen to podcasts.

Elena: Which came first to you? The idea of writing an epistolary novel or the fabulously outspoken protagonist, Sybil Van Antwerp.

Virginia: For me the vehicle of the letters came first. I had read 84 Charing Cross Road, which is a beloved epistolary classic. I had read that book with my book club at the beginning of Covid.

It was exactly what I wanted to read at the time. There’s something about it that is literary and smart, but there’s also something very approachable about that format, I think because the letters are short, digestible and there’s often a page break.

Usually, when I’m starting to write a new novel, I will start with what I want to be reading.

And then it was a matter of asking myself what kind of a person would write enough letters for a story and what kind of a person would have been narrating their whole life in this form. And Sybil arrived to me. I could hear her voice, and that’s how it got going.

Elena: Before writing this novel, you got a Master of Philosophy in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin, and one of your tutors was one of Ireland’s finest contemporary writers, Claire Keegan. Can you tell us a few top tips from Claire about writing fiction and how you incorporated those top tips when you were writing The Correspondent?

 Claire is so generous of spirit when she’s teaching. She was saying, here’s everything I know. Here’s all my knowledge and wisdom about writing. And you can have it; you can have everything I have. I feel like Claire lives behind my left shoulder when I’m writing now.

She would say that when you’re creating a world of fiction, you are creating this whole universe that’s inside a bubble. And when your reader comes into the bubble through the text, through the short story or the novel or whatever it is, you are bringing them inside of this world. And if there’s ever a moment where the reader sits back from the text and says, I don’t believe you, you’ve lost the story.

The story no longer stands. I’ve thought about that. When I write scenes or when I write dialogue or any part of a story, I am always thinking about my reader.

Do they believe this? Do they believe what’s happening? Would this character do this? Do they believe me? Even if it’s a wild thing that happens, or something very dramatic, or when I’m revising, I’m thinking, does (the reader) believe me?

Claire also taught me that when you enter a story, as the writer, you are making an incision in the timeline of this world. Every good story starts with a person in a place.

And Claire said you must decide why you’re making the incision in the timeline there. That might not be the best place to begin.

Another thing I’ll share, she says if you don’t know what to do next when you’re writing, you follow the feet of the person that you’re writing about. Where do their feet go? It can’t just be this cerebral thing. It needs to be tactile and physical. People go places, people follow their physical body.

Last thing, she says, whatever you put into the story at the beginning – any detail, person, or factor, that’s at the beginning must be braided into the end as well.

Elena: Those are great tips. You have so many mini plots in your story, all subsumed under one main plot, which is Sybil’s long held grief for things that happened a long time ago. Did you include all these various strands during your first draft?

 I don’t know that I included every one of them. What I was doing when I was writing the story was trying to tell a complete picture of a complete life. But we don’t live in a vacuum. And so, part of understanding who Sybil was, was having these people around her to hold up a mirror. She shows a different side of herself to all these other people in the story.

I was always intending to write a good story that I would want to read. People ask me what was the statement you were making on grief or on family? On motherhood?

I wasn’t trying to make any statements. I was just trying to write a good story that would make (readers) want to keep turning the page.

Elena: I wanted to ask you about the Texan suitor. Now why did you bring him? Was it as a counterpoint to her quieter next-door neighbour suitor Theodore?

 The suitor came in early I wanted redemption. I wanted things to get better. I wanted to see that there’s a chance for something to go from bad to good, you know? I mean, in my life, I think that’s what we want as humans. And obviously not every story can be redemptive. And this story, it’s not fully happy. It has a lot of sadness in it.

I wanted this woman to have her life open up like a tulip, to have this whole thing open and expand instead of to shrink in on itself, which is what you expect as a reader and what she expects.

And so, you know, I just think with Mick Watts from Texas, I thought some man would think she was a great catch. She’s smart. She has a waterfront property; she had a great career. You know, she’s a catch.

Elena: She is.

 I just thought somebody would come after her. I just think they would.

Elena: How did you pick those 10 years? 2012 to 2022 to place the story?

 I wanted to write something modern. I have shied away from modern times in writing fiction. And yet, this is the world I live in, and this is my time and my current moment. It does feel counterintuitive to have a book in letters, which feels antiquated…

People write to me letters and emails, and I get a lot of feedback from readers now. And so many people are women in their seventies who write letters. And they say, I can’t believe you wrote this book. I don’t see myself in fiction. I don’t see myself in movies, but I see myself in this book.

Elena: I’m 63, and when I read about Sybil crushing it at 73, I was hopeful.

What is the magic of letter writing. Do you think it’s a lost art?

 You really hit the nail on the head that it’s magic. I just don’t think there are many forms of magic left.  You can get an economy ticket anywhere, waiting to hear news of something wonderful or something awful is immediately in your hand through cell phones. There are very few places where we have to wait and have our waiting rewarded with something interesting or magnificent.

In my own life right now, I’m checking these bestseller lists to see if we’ve made it on the list. I can just look on my computer. I don’t have to wait to see the newspaper. I don’t have to wait to get the news from my publisher. I can keep hitting refresh on my computer. You can watch any movie you want right now. With social media, you can see inside people’s houses.

If I go to the mailbox today and there is a letter to me, it feels like a secret or a treasure or something that’s not trackable. It’s personal.  I have framed letters on the wall in my home from people. It’s an artifact, a piece of something physical that I can hold.

 In the book, Sybil has this letter that her mother wrote to her when she gave her up for adoption, and this is the thing, Sybil cares more about this physical object than any other physical object that she has. She has treasured it since she was a child. There are just a few things in this world that are still magical, and I think a letter is one of them.

My grandfather is 100 years old. A few months ago, we were talking about how he was on a ship in the Panama Canal when World War II was over. And he says the name of the ship and my son, who is 12, picks up my phone. He’s doing something on the phone and then he hands my grandfather the phone.

And it’s a picture of the ship he was on.

My grandfather’s face, it just went white. And he said, I’ve never seen the ship since I got off it when I was 20 years old. And then my son can just look it up on Google. There is something about what we have access to now that takes away some of the magic of things.

Elena: What advice would you give to authors who are struggling to get published? Because I believe you had a hard time with your books before.

 Yes. Ugh. Well, this is the ninth novel I’ve written and none of the other ones made it through to the end.

Elena: That must have been hard.

 Yeah. Long time. I started writing my first novel when I was 19, and I am 39, so 20 years

Elena: Perseverance.

 Yes. Perseverance or courage or madness

Elena: Love of writing.

 Love of writing. Inability to walk away. The obvious answer is to say just keep going. But I’m saying that from the other side, and I want to say, I recognize that I’m saying that from the other side. I, for 20 years, was the person that heard people say that and said, you can only say that because you’re on the other side.

I will say you’ll never know if you can do it if you stop trying, you’ll never know if you can get to the end, cross the finish line, break through the glass ceiling, all those things I always felt I was trying to do.

I do think if I’m giving encouragement, what I would most want to say is that if you feel like writing fiction or just writing is a thing that’s chasing you, I think that means you’re a writer and you’ll just have to keep going.

And even if you get a lot of rejections. I mean, I have been rejected thousands of times by agents, publishers, periodicals magazines, thousands. So, you get a really thick skin. You learn what’s important. Let me tell you, it’s not the writing, It’s my family.

Elena: Did you have agents who were encouraging, even if they didn’t take it.

 I did. There were a few people along the way who were generous to me. I always felt that there were these divine moments along the way when I was about ready to say, I cannot do this anymore.

Somebody would say something to me in the moment that I was about to be done. They’d say, I think you really do have what it takes. I think you’re really good at this. I think you can do it. You shouldn’t quit. Don’t quit. I think those lily pads of encouragement got me across the ocean, lily pad to lily pad. I can look back on 20 years and the last year of my life has been successful and wonderful, but it was gruelling and demoralizing for my whole adult life until now.

Elena: So did it take you by surprise, how quickly this book took off?

 The whole thing has really taken me by surprise. I was so mentally adjusted to failure and rejection. So then when it was purchased, I thought, surely not, surely, nobody wants this. They made a huge mistake, take the money back.

It was pretty miraculous. It went out for sale in March of 2023, and it sold in June of 2023. And those months when it wasn’t getting any traction, I thought, okay, we’ve done it again. We’ve failed again. And then miracle of miracles, the week before my birthday, we get this call from Amy Einhorn, who’s a wonderful editor with lots of history of great books, and she bought the book and she said, I love this book. I haven’t cried reading a book in years. And I cried reading this book. She said, I have to have it. I want it.

And then ever since then, it’s been one amazing leap after another. It has sold really well all over the world. It has great endorsements from writers.

Elena: Ann Patchett amongst others.

 What do you hope readers will take away when they finish this?

I am glad that you said the book is hopeful, that it inspires hope in you. I mostly hope for that. I think the story is about being human and all that that entails, receiving and dishing out pain and having to deal with that and say you’re sorry, and go back and ask for forgiveness. I think most of us do our best, but we also mess up and have to say, I’m sorry. I caused pain and I received pain. And I think the book seems to be resonating from conversations I’ve had.

Elena: So, my last question is an easy one. What’s a favorite book that you read in the last year?

 Heart The Lover by Lily King. I really enjoyed it.  I also read a book in the spring when I was on holiday in Ireland. The Boy From the Sea, by Garrett Carr.

Elena: Well thank you Virginia. This was really great. I knew it would be because I’ve watched some of your other interviews. You didn’t let me down. So thank you.

Oh gosh. It was an honor to be asked. Really nice to meet you.

Elena: You too.

October, 2025

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