C. S. Pacat is a bestselling Australian author, best known for the ''Captive Prince'' trilogy, published by

Penguin Random House Penguin Random House LLC is an Anglo-American multinational conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, from the merger of Penguin Group and Random House. On April 2, 2020, Bertelsmann announced the completion of its purchase o ...

in 2015.

Personal life

Pacat was born in

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/ Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a me ...

, Australia, and was educated at the

University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb n ...

. She lived in several different cities including

Perugia Perugia (, , ; lat, Perusia) is the capital city of Umbria in central Italy, crossed by the River Tiber, and of the province of Perugia. The city is located about north of Rome and southeast of Florence. It covers a high hilltop and par ...

where she studied at Perugia University, and Tokyo, where she lived for five years. Pacat wrote the ''Captive Prince'' trilogy around her day job as a translator while training as a geologist. Pacat is queer and

genderqueer Non-binary and genderqueer are umbrella terms for gender identities that are not solely male or femaleidentities that are outside the gender binary. Non-binary identities fall under the transgender umbrella, since non-binary people typic ...

, using both she/her and he/him pronouns. She identifies as "a proud

wog ''Wog'' is a racial slur in Australian English and British English applied to people from the Mediterranean region such as Southern Europeans and North Africans. In British English, it more typically refers to people from the Indian subcontine ...

," and states that this played an influence while writing the ''Captive Prince'' trilogy: "As for the influence on ''Captive Prince'', I'm a bisexual wog, and Damen is a bisexual wog - so there's that....There's a lot of wog-politics in the series, although its rarely read from that perspective outside of Australia".

Literary career

Pacat's first novel ''Captive Prince'' began as an online serial of original "

slash Slash may refer to: * Slash (punctuation), the "/" character Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Slash (Marvel Comics) * Slash (''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'') Music * Harry Slash & The Slashtones, an American rock band * Nash th ...

" fiction on

LiveJournal LiveJournal (russian: Живой Журнал), stylised as LiVEJOURNAL, is a Russian-owned social networking service where users can keep a blog, journal, or diary. American programmer Brad Fitzpatrick started LiveJournal on April 15, 1999, ...

, where it garnered viral attention. Self-published in February 2013, ''Captive Prince'' was then acquired by

, and published commercially in April 2015 in multiple territories. The sequel ''Prince's Gambit'' was released in July 2015, and the final novel in the trilogy ''Kings Rising'' was released in February 2016. The series was short-listed for the Sara Douglass Book Series Award, part of the

Aurealis Awards The Aurealis Award for Excellence in Speculative Fiction is an annual literary award for Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror fiction. Only Australians are eligible for the award. History The Aurealis Award was established in 1995 ...

. In 2017 she revealed that she was working on a new comic series ''Fence'', about the world of fencing. The series has since been expanded to include a series of novels by

Sarah Rees Brennan Sarah Rees Brennan (born 21 September 1983) is an Irish writer best known for young adult fantasy fiction. Her first novel, ''The Demon's Lexicon'', was released June 2009 by Simon & Schuster. Rees Brennan's books are bestsellers in the UK. Lif ...

and was nominated for a

GLAAD GLAAD (), an acronym of Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, is an American non-governmental media monitoring organization originally founded as a protest against defamatory coverage of gay and lesbian demographics and their portraya ...

award in 2019. In 2019 she announced a new trilogy
Dark Rise
a YA fantasy novel series. The first installment hit the New York Times bestsellers list in October 2021 and was awarded the 2021 Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

Bibliography

''Captive Prince'' trilogy

* ''Captive Prince'' (7 April 2015) * ''Prince's Gambit'' (7 July 2015) * ''Kings Rising'' (2 February 2016) The fantasy series centres around a romance between two princes of rival countries. Damianos killed Laurent's beloved elder brother in battle when he was younger, but then he finds himself sent to Laurent's country to be his slave several years later, as a result of his own brother's plot for the throne.

''Captive Prince'' short stories

* ''The Training of Erasmus'' (published only in the US print edition of ''Captive Prince'') * ''Green but for a Season'' (20 September 2016) * ''The Summer Palace'' (5 January 2017) * ''The Adventures of Charls, the Veretian Cloth Merchant'' (3 May 2017) * ''Pet'' (6 January 2018) * ''The Summer Palace and Other Stories: A Captive Prince Short Story Collection'' (20 October 2018) (Includes four of the short stories, excluding The Training of Erasmus)

''Captive Prince'' bonus material

An extension of ''Prince's Gambits chapter 19, entitled Chapter 19.5, is exclusively available in the US paperback edition.

''Fence'' comic series

Issues

* ''Fence #1'' (15 November 2017) * ''Fence #2'' (20 December 2017) * ''Fence #3'' (17 January 2018) * ''Fence #4'' (21 February 2018) * ''Fence #5'' (18 April 2018) * ''Fence #6'' (16 May 2018) * ''Fence #7'' (20 June 2018) * ''Fence #8'' (18 July 2018) * ''Fence #9'' (15 August 2018) * ''Fence #10'' (26 September 2018) * ''Fence #11'' (31 October 2018) * ''Fence #12'' (28 November 2018)

Collected editions

* ''Fence Vol. 1'' (combines issues #1-4) (31 July 2018) * ''Fence Vol. 2'' (combines issues #5-8) (15 January 2019) * ''Fence Vol. 3'' (combines issues #9-12) (20 August 2019)

Graphic Novels

* ''Fence Vol. 4'' ("Rivals") (15 July 2020) * ''Fence Vol. 5'' ("Rise") (16 August 2022)

''Dark Rise'' trilogy

* '' Dark Rise'' (September 2021)

DC Comics

* ''Dark Knights of Steel #1: Tales From The Three Kingdoms'' (September 2022) * ''Nightwing Annual'' (November 2022) * ''Lazarus Planet #1: Assault on Krypton''

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pacat, C. S. Living people Australian LGBT writers Non-binary writers Genderqueer people Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century LGBT people Bisexual writers