young adult fantasy author
Esther Scherpenisse
Esther Scherpenisse is a Dutch writer of YA fantasy who lives below sea level but with her head in the clouds. Her debut novel, Cinders and Stars, won SCBWI’s Undiscovered Voices 2024 and was a finalist in the Guppy Books Open Submission Competition. It will be published in April 2026. Preorder below and join her newsletter to stay informed!
coming april 2026
For a thousand years, Kaisi’s people have kept the spellbinders chained to their will. Until those chains break…
Overnight, Kaisi’s father is executed. Her brothers are bound into mindless puppets.
She is spared for one reason: her genius at the forge. The skills she was never meant to have.
Jule, the heir apparent of the rebellion, offers her a bargain: build an impossible device that will give Jule unrivaled power, and Kaisi’s brothers go free.
It’s all Kaisi ever wanted: her family safe and a legacy all her own.
Only Niall, the blacksmith who knows her better than anyone, understands what she’s really being asked to build. Not just a device—a weapon to settle a centuries-old grudge.
Kaisi tells herself she can finish and still have it all. Her brothers. Her legacy. The boy who’s becoming more than just a friend.
She doesn’t look at what it would cost to be wrong.
published works
Long For This World
Ter ziele
Periphery
I can’t believe this is real
I violently dislike using a cliche to convey my feelings. It doesn't seem right for an author to rely on expressions that have been so thoroughly chewed on, rehashed, worn to death. But in this case, I have no other resource but to say: I can't believe this is real....
AI slop – the end of art?
AI slop is everywhere. A YouTube video recently informed me half of the content on the internet is now created by AI instead of humans. And it's good enough that we can't always tell the difference between things generated by AI and generated by a human. What does...
“A compelling, emotionally charged story.” (Goodreads review)
“The story keeps things short and sweet and packs a great punch when it comes to the main character’s choices. Highly recommended.”
(SFF Reviews)