An Interview with Author Katherine Mezzacappa

I had the pleasure of meeting the wonderfully talented Katherine Mezzacappa while in Dublin, where I was invited to speak at the Dublin International Writers' Festival in September of 2025. Katherine was hosting a book signing at the iconic Hodges Figgis bookstore for her newest release at the time, The Maiden of Florence. Katherine is not only an accomplished, talented author, but also a truly remarkable individual. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to interview her for my blog. ​

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Audrey: Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview, Katherine. I'm so excited to hear more about your writing career. 

Katherine: Thank you for inviting me onto your blog today, Audrey. I’ve been looking forward to our conversation since our meeting at the last International Dublin Writers Festival.

Audrey: You spoke in Dublin about the craft of writing historical fiction. Can you tell me a bit about why you chose that genre?

Katherine: I didn’t know what to start with. I originally planned to write contemporary romance, back in the 1990s. I pitched a short novel to Mills & Boon (Harlequin in the US); they gave me kind feedback but declined my book. Then life got in the way (business career, children, relocation) and I wrote only non-fiction for a while (magazine articles, an academic text, a Human Resources manual) until a dear friend convinced me to join her on a creative writing Masters being launched in Canterbury (England), where I was then living. For my submission, I wrote part of a novel set in wartime Italy and realised historical fiction was what I was meant to be writing. I got feedback from the selection board that ‘I forgot why I was supposed to be reading this, I was so immersed in it.’ Another faculty member said that I wrote in an ‘old-fashioned way.’ I took that as the compliment he said he intended. I understand where that came from. I was a pretty introverted adolescent who took refuge in books. I’d read everything by Thomas Hardy by the time I was fourteen, along with the Brontës, Jane Austen, George Eliot and so on, most of which wasn’t historical fiction but fiction from history. This taught me about voice (though I didn’t know it at the time); as a regular reviewer (for the Historical Novel Society) and as a manuscript assessor, I too often encounter good stories marred by the protagonists talking and behaving as if they are my contemporaries. Consequently, for each book I write, I read a vast amount of material that people were reading at the time my story is set: novels, yes, but also newspaper articles, memoirs, court reports etc. For instance, for my novel The Maid of Lindal Hall (2023, writing as Katie Hutton) set in England in the 1930s, I read Agatha Christie novels of that decade, though I wasn’t writing a crime novel, because Christie catches a turn of phrase, a reference that captures the spirit of the age.

I write some contemporary fiction too, under the name Kate Zarrelli, alongside my longer projects, with protagonists who are a lot younger than I am. I eavesdrop on younger people’s conversations on public transport and check things with my sons and their girlfriends! Updated, the novel that was turned down in the 1990s was published about five years ago and has been followed by two others, with a fourth in press.

Audrey: That last example suggests a degree of resilience is needed as a writer.

Katherine: Absolutely. I have a dear friend, a sculptor living in Oregon. She told me about her art school reunion a few years back. She said, ‘I wasn’t the best sculptor but I was the only one still working as one.’ She’s a superb sculptor, but her point is that you just have to stick at it. A couple of instances: I wrote The Ballad of Mary Kearney back in 2016, my second full-length attempt after the novel I wrote on my Masters programme. It got some great feedback but no takers. I went on to publish four books (as Katie Hutton), then under my own name, The Maiden of Florence. But I kept faith with Mary Kearney (and kept revising) and the book was published by Histria (Las Vegas) in January this year. The other instance is The Maiden of Florence. It was due out in September 2022 but six weeks before publication date the publisher’s site went down and he wasn’t answering emails. The business had failed. There were no signals this was going to happen. Dispirited, I started the submission round all over again, ended up with four offers and Fairlight, the new publisher, is magnificent.

Audrey: As a writer myself, I always love hearing advice from other writers. What advice can you give on the writing process?

Katherine: I have advice for writers around resilience. One is, ‘it’s a habit, not a hobby.’ You have to treat writing like work, even if it’s often a struggle to earn money from it. The other is, ‘you can’t revise a blank page.’ In other words, write every day but don’t worry about whether it’s good or not. You can fix it the next day. What also works for me is having at least two projects on the go at once. That means if I can’t see how to go forward with one story, I work on the other. When I come back to the first one, the problem has usually un-knotted itself. Also, be easy to work with and gracious, even if not everyone in the publishing world will always treat you with the same professionalism.

Audrey: When we were introduced in Dublin at the launch of The Maiden of Florence, you told a curious story of how the story came into being. Could you share that with our readers?

Katherine: That was a real stroke of luck. I’d accompanied my son to a medical appointment but because we were running late, I’d rushed out without a book or my Kindle. In the doctor's waiting room there was a choice of gossip magazines (this was pre-Covid) and one lone medical journal – dedicated to erectile dysfunction. My excuse is that as a novelist the psychological causes of this affliction had to be of interest. It had one tiny historical column. It provided the bones of the story of my novel, of a girl taken from a church-run orphanage in Florence in 1584 to act as a proof of virility for the heir to the dukedom of Mantua, as a condition for his dynastic marriage with a Medici princess. The unsuspecting orphan was provided with a husband after the event; he was bribed with a considerable dowry. I tell her story, from her point of view (barely heard in the historical record) and then create the story of the marriage.

Audrey: What other sources of inspiration would you recommend to those who want to write historical fiction?

Katherine: Visit historic sites, out of season if possible. Look at portraits in museums, and if you see a face that seems to really be looking at you, research any symbols you find in the painting. Do they hold something that has meaning, like a piece of coral, for instance? How are they dressed? Costume museums are a great source too. As mentioned above, read literature of the time.

Audrey: What are you working on now?

Katherine: I’m venturing into historic crime, with the first of a series set in Renaissance city state courts. My protagonist is a physician, trained at the School of Salerno. Women were trained there too in the Middle Ages but I opted for a male protagonist because he would have more agency. I have also started on a novel set near Edinburgh in the 1920s, inspired by a stray comment I heard some years ago. When this old man was a child, the gentry in his village lost their only son in World War I. He left behind a baby he’d fathered on a local girl, but the grandparents refused to acknowledge the little boy. When the memory resurfaced, I could ‘see’ this young woman holding her child’s hand, standing at the gates to the grandparents’ estate.

I also have a novel out on submission. It’s the story of Lucie Dumas, the mistress of the man of letters Samuel Butler. He found her as a streetwalker in Islington in 1871. But this isn’t a Victorian ‘Pretty Woman’ story. She had left behind a child in France whom she would never see again. Some years into the arrangement with Butler, he introduced one of his friends and paid for him to visit her once a week as well. Her response to this arrangement is not recorded.

Audrey: Thank you so much, Katherine! I'm sure our readers will find your story and advice very helpful. I know I did!

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Katherine's book The Maiden of Florence as well as her other work can be found on Amazon and where books are sold. 

You can follow Katherine on Bluesky and Facebook, and learn more about her on her website. 

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