The Big Idea: Alethea Kontis

Not all books fit the mold of the genre they’re in. For Alethea Kontis, she wanted to write romance without the explicit parts, wanted to write a YA book that wasn’t dumbed down for kids with no attention span and no literacy skills. Well, she did it, and she did it her way, in her newest novel, Thieftess. ALETHEA KONTIS: This post is for the smart kids. The rebels. My fellow goonies. This essay marks my FIFTH time as a guest on The Big Idea—I am now a proud member of the Whatever Five-Timers Club! Please remind me to make sure John and Athena mail me my membership card. The last time I was featured on Whatever was in 2017. The Before Times. An Age of Innocence. Social media was less commercial, Gen AI was a dream of the future, and the CDC’s playbook was positive the next great pandemic would be influenza. I went to conventions back then. I knew what K-pop was, but I didn’t know K-dramas existed. I didn’t speak any Korean, Portuguese, Croatian, or Arabic. I had never been to Asia or…