Hesse Phillips’ debut novel, Lightborne, was a 2022 finalist in the Irish Writers Centre’s Novel Fair and a Historical Fiction Pick of the Year for 2024 in The Times (UK). It has been called “vivid and volatile,” (The Guardian) “outrageously entertaining,” (CrimeReads) and “dazzling” (The Financial Times). Hesse’s poetry and short fiction have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. They are a recurring guest on The 7AM Novelist Podcast with Michelle Hoover and have written for DeadDarlings and NPR.
Hesse was born and raised in rural Pennsylvania but now lives in Spain. They have a PhD in Drama from Tufts University and are a graduate of Grub Street Boston’s intensive Novel Incubator program.
Lightborne: A Novel
One of The Times’ and The Sunday Times’ 10 Best Historical Fiction Books of 2024
“A wonderfully vivid and edgy piece of storytelling, the kind of brilliant writing that rescues historical fiction from the museum.”
– Joseph O’Connor, Author of Star of the Sea & Shadowplay
“Imaginative, atmospheric, and heart-poundingly tense… Forget all the polite queer historical novels that tell no truths – here is one boldly full of them.”
– Neil Blackmore, Author of Radical Love
“A hugely impressive, visceral and moving portrait of one of the era’s most captivating and mysterious characters.”
– Suzi Feay, The Financial Times
UK TRADE PAPERBACK EDITION OUT NOW
In the media
The Guardian
In Brief: Lightborne Review
“Vivid and volatile, [Lightborne is] historical fiction in which nothing feels foretold and everything is to play for.”
The Historical Novel Society
A Review of Lightborne by Hesse Phillips
“Trust, love and betrayal all compete in this fascinating take on the life and death of Kit Marlowe.”
The Chicago Review of Books
76 Notable Debuts by Trans, Nonbinary, and Gender Non-Conforming Authors in 2024
“Christopher Marlowe: playwright, poet, lover. In the plague-stricken streets of Elizabethan England, Kit flirts with danger, leaving a trail of enemies and old flames in his wake.”
CrimeReads
The Best Historical Fiction of 2024
“Lightborne is so much more than its details, no matter how outrageously entertaining, for the soul of this work comes from its clear-eyed portrait of humanity: the best, the worst, and the somewhere-in-between.”
The Times/The Sunday Times
The 10 Best Historical Fiction Books of 2024
“The turbulent life and mysterious death of the Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe have been gifts for novelists, but there has never been a fictional retelling of them that is as vivid and original as this one[.]”
The Los Angeles Daily News
How ‘Lightborne’ explores the mystery of Christopher Marlowe’s murder
Author Hesse Phillips discusses their 20-year odyssey working on a novel incorporating English history, queer romance and espionage.
Pangyrus
On Queer Ancestors, Stubbornness, and Living “Close to the Knives”: A conversation with Hesse Phillips’ about their debut novel, Lightborne
“In this richly atmospheric and beautifully imagined novel, Hesse Phillips brings Marlowe’s final days to life in vivid, gripping detail.”
DeadDarlings.com
Spies, Love on the Margins, and “The History of Lost Things” in Hesse Phillips’ Debut Novel, Lightborne
“Please read on for the fascinating conversation I had with Hesse Phillips, and pre-order Lightborne to get your hands on this fantastic book as soon as possible (October 22).”
CrimeReads
The Most Anticipated Crime, Horror, and Mystery Novels of Fall 2024
“With spies and romance and an absolutely devastating denouement, Lightborne is as bloody and beautiful as the great Marlowe’s plays… outrageously entertaining.”
The Irish Times
Lightborne by Hesse Phillips: Biography of playwright exerts a powerful pull
“A thoroughly contemporary take. Phillips links not only Marlowe’s killing, but also the great conspiracy of his time, the Jesuit ‘Babington Plot’ against Elizabeth I, to betrayed homosexual love. A fast-paced narrative chain of theatrical scenes breathes new life into familiar images of the period.”
The Sunday Times
Book of the Month, May 2024
“Other works of fiction have been written about the turbulent life and still not fully understood death of Elizabethan dramatist Christopher Marlowe… Probably none has demonstrated the erudition and the intensity of Hesse Phillips’s debut novel.”
The Financial Times
Women as witches and Elizabethan intrigue – the pick of new debut fiction
“Dazzling… The novel is a hugely impressive, visceral and moving portrait of one of the era’s most captivating and mysterious characters.”
From the blog
- Research Diaries #2: Hell is empty & all the devils are here.Hi. This is me poking my head out of my writing cave, wanting to talk about a work-in-progress for a minute. It’s Schrodinger’s book, as it stands. But with any luck – and a lot more work – perhaps it will one day step out of the box, alive.
- What I owe the International Debut Novel CompetitionHey, hey writer – this is me, telling you, to submit to the International Debut Novel Competition. Subs close 14th September 2025!
- Lightborne Updates: UK Trade Paperback OUT NOW!The big day is finally here!
- Lightborne Updates: Paperbacks & Staying AliveIn which I stand amidst the smoldering wreckage and wax lyrical about paperback books.
- A Statement on the Oxford Literary FestivalSo no one accuses me of burying the lede: AJ West and I have withdrawn from our panel, “Hidden Lives, Forbidden Loves,” which had been scheduled to take place at the Oxford Literary Festival. For me, this was not an easy decision. Surely, that will surprise some people, given that the OLF has decided to platform not one but two anti-trans speakers with headlining events. The situation is different for me because, as I understand it, I was the only out trans person scheduled to speak at the festival.
Recent Publications
I found queer history in literature, and it changed my life
NPR’s Cognoscenti, December 3 2024
I grew up during the 1980s in a small Rust Belt town. My childhood home had also been my mother’s childhood home; my elementary school had been her school; my teachers had been her teachers. It was a world that tasted of potato salad and ketchup, that smelled of 4th of July fireworks, gasoline and manure. A world where cars filled and emptied the church parking lots as regularly as the tides, and weathered flags flew from every porch. You can’t get much more all-American.
Resurrecting Christopher Marlowe As A Queer Icon
CrimeReads, October 22 2024
Whatever our rational selves believe, writing about a real historical person—that is, writing about the dead—obliges us to believe in hauntings, at least temporarily. Inspiration comes as visitation, the moment when you look up and sense that a ghost has entered the room. Like any ghost, we are drawn to them, and they to us, by unfinished business. To serve justice, settle a score, unmask a killer, set a record straight. They harass us, they possess us. “Avenge me!” they cry, until our task is done.
The Fraud
Blue Press Magazine, July 8 2024
When I first met convicted art-forger Freddy Plinko in Los Angeles in the summer of 1960, I was a twenty-four-year-old journalist on my first assignment to America, and he recently a septuagenarian. Before the war, Freddy had been known to the public as a celebrated art dealer and collector, often photographed at grand functions in my native city of Paris or in New York, or poolside at the home of a Hollywood starlet […] Now, however, he was essentially homeless—his millions, his homes, and his celebrity all drained away during his five-year stint in Fleury-Mérogis.
Sebastian Melmoth in Silver City
(Pushcart Prize Nominee 2023)
Pangyrus, March 31 2023
No trains ran to Silver City, Idaho, on the rugged edge of what was, in 1882, agreed to be the United States of America. When our stagecoach broke an axle crossing the mountains, the driver saddled two spare horses, one for Oscar, one for me, and like true men of the west, we rode towards Silver City, breaths puffing in the chilly, argent dawn.
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