Jes5ica asked Cat Winters:

Is there a certain Historical period that you are leery about setting a novel in? If so, why?

Cat Winters Thanks for the great question! I was actually nervous about working on my current project, a novel about teenage Edgar Allan Poe, because I was going farther back in time than what I usually write about and had to start from scratch with research—but I was also feeling ready for an extra challenge. The novel is set in the American South in the 1820s, and Poe's guardians owned slaves, so I needed to include the topic of slavery in the novel—a subject I was never intending to write about before this book idea came along. I was definitely leery about working with this historical period for this reason, and I've been mindful of how I'm portraying the enslaved servants who impacted young Poe's life. I don't think I would have chosen this setting if it hadn't been attached to the real-life person whom I chose for the subject of my novel.

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