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| Kamilah Cole (photo: Dasha G) |
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Kamilah Cole is a Jamaican-born, U.S.-raised author. Her first two novels were a young adult duology retelling the story of Joan of Arc. An Arcane Inheritance (Poisoned Pen Press, December 30, 2025) is her first book for adults, a dark academia novel exploring themes of classism, racism, and elitism in institutions of higher education--but with a magical bent. A graduate of NYU, Cole now lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she works in publishing.
Would you classify An Arcane Inheritance as dark academia?
It is also a fantasy, it has romantic elements, it has thriller elements, mystery elements, but yes, it's dark academia. I love the genre. Give me a creepy school and I am all over it. But I felt there was a dearth of stories really talking about how difficult and confusing it can be to navigate higher education when you weren't born in America. The immigrant experience is a constant sense of non-belonging. That can be as scary; no matter where you go, what you do, and how hard you try, you're always different.
The core of An Arcane Inheritance is finding out that the only way that you can belong is to accept the parts of you that are you, that are different, and let the world fall in place after that. That's the journey Ellory takes, through magic and memory, and college parties and dating and ghosts, all of that. She has a more speculative journey to acceptance than most immigrants do, but at the end of the day, An Arcane Inheritance is a dark academia immigrant story. It is about disappearance and belonging, memory and knowledge, hidden tattoos, snarky rival men, and it's a commentary on elitism, classism, racism.
What draws you to this genre, as both a writer and a reader?
Education is such a big part of our life. And it's interesting to me as a writer to explore how no two people go through life the same way. Your socioeconomic place in this world really affects how easy or difficult things are, how hard you have to work, what opportunities open up to you, and I feel like nowhere is that inequality shown more than in school. We are told that education is an equalizer, that if you work hard enough, get good enough grades, you will get all the same opportunities. Then you graduate, and you still can't get a job because your father doesn't own a multimillion-dollar company. There are all these conversations about equality, but what is really needed is equity. The acknowledgement that not everybody starts at the same place, and to reach the same things, they need different kinds of help.
Could you talk a bit more about that distinction between equality and equity?
When first starting this book, even beyond the worldbuilding, I wanted to look at power on an individual level through various characters. I wanted to examine the fact that no matter what you give up for power, at the end of the day, there are some things that nothing but connections can get you. And that's part of the equity conversation.
I wanted to study how unexamined systems can perpetuate harm, not just for people outside of them but also for people inside of them. How actively choosing to uphold such a system hurts everyone, including yourself. You can't skirt close to white supremacy and expect it not to burn you as well. Then there are people who are born wealthy, and I wanted to explore the idea that it is not just required, but almost a calling to use that privilege--to create equity, to help other people, to be a kinder, better person, and create a kinder, better world.
At the end of the day, I think we've all got power. We all want control. We all want to be happy and successful and content, but we really need to look at not only the sacrifices that we are forced to make, but the sacrifices that we ask others to make, whether they can consent to that sacrifice or not. It is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the ends justify the means, but that's not the case.
In all of my books, but especially in An Arcane Inheritance, I introduce a lot of big themes, questions that I'm grappling with, but I try never to give a definitive answer. I just want people to think about these things. I don't want to tell them what to think. These are questions that we need to keep in mind, because the moment that we stop thinking about these things is the moment that people get hurt.
As someone who also works in publishing, have you found anything shocking from the author side of the process?
Yes! It's actually shocking to me how much I didn't know about the writer's side. I don't know when I'll hear about cover design, or how often deadlines shift, and how easily. I didn't know anything about how to be edited, from theme edits to line edits to copy edits, to cast pages, to proofreading and sensitivity reading. I had to learn all those steps.
It's also shocking how much writers don't know about publishing. I also get to be in spaces with other writers, and I try to give back by telling them things I do know about publishing. Again, it goes back to equity. If I have information that you don't have, I want to share it with you so we can all have that same access. But yeah, I'm still surprised sometimes by how much I don't actually know about publishing.
An Arcane Inheritance is your first book for adults. What felt different here after writing YA for your first two novels?
YA is often marketed as coming of age. But you come of age many more times in your life. So the difference for me was not in the kind of story that I was telling, but in the emotional beat of the story. There's an immediacy of emotion that happens as a teenager; everything feels so big and so awful, or so wonderful. But Ellory is older when she starts college, and instead of immediate emotions, she will feel something, and then she will take a beat before choosing how to express how she is feeling. That's not even to say that one reaction is better than another--repressing your emotions is not healthy! I really admire teens for being so, so themselves, in a way it feels like you can't be as an adult. You are no longer thinking about needing to find your place in the world, and more like, This is the world, and I need to fit into it.
What was most important to you when setting out to write An Arcane Inheritance?
I wanted to make this book as queer and as Jamaican as possible. I have a lot of critiques of higher education, but it is because of the people that I met in college and the people that I know now that I became a person who's so proud of my Jamaican heritage, and a person who is able to navigate queer spaces without questioning myself. So I think of An Arcane Inheritance as a love letter to Jamaicans, and to Jamaican Americans, and to queer people everywhere in a time when immigrants and queer people and queer books are under attack. I will always, always, always stand up for us. I will always continue to put my work out into the world and hope that people find it--and find themselves--within the pages. --Kerry McHugh