What is the title of your latest release?
THE STOLEN WOMEN
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
I usually begin with: you know those guys on the internet who run accounts about “classics aesthetics” or “ancient world art” that you are pretty sure are probably nazis? Well, those guys are gonna hate this book. It’s a retelling of an Ancient Roman myth—the abduction of the Sabine women—from the perspective of a woman warrior hoping to bring them home.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
Briefly, I considered transposing the story of the Sabine women to a different time and place, but Rome itself is such a rich area of history, and the ramifications of founding the city on a mass kidnapping—the Sabine women were taken by Romulus to be the first mothers of Rome—have such far reaching effects. When I joined the award-holders at the British School at Rome to research the novel, that cemented its setting.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
I would, but she might not! Safinia, my heroine, is prickly. Intensely loyal to those she loves and considers family, but it’s hard to convince her to hang out. Like many of the local girls, I’d probably just sigh over her from afar.
What are three words that describe your hero?
Brooding, protective, determined.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
How entangled the Fascist era of Italy is with its history. Mussolini’s reign involved a huge boom of excavations, with none of the conservation or documentation practices we have now—this is why there are ruins all over Rome. The point was to tie Mussolini to the Roman emperors, not to learn anything or preserve it for the future.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
I have a whole system I call looping. It all happens at once; I’m adjusting the outline while writing the draft, while adjusting the outline, while writing the draft. But I can’t touch line edits until the very end, because I end up rewriting so much.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Keeping it on a Rome theme here. When I lived in Rome researching the novel, there was a pizza place next to the Flaminio metro stop that sold Carciofi alla Giudia—Jewish fried artichokes, which are a staple of Roman cuisine. They taste like potato chips!
Describe your writing space/office!
I redecorate according to project. Right now picture lots of small sculptures and postcards from museum gift shops, an overly ornate desk I bought at a vintage sale (it’s leather-inlaid with gold paint! I love it), and framed pieces of art. In Rome, though, my set-up was very austere—I had desk 20 at the British School library, and it was stacked with lots of Etruscan and early Roman manuals.
Who is an author you admire?
Elodie Harper’s Wolf Den series and follow up Boudicca’s Daughter remain, to me, absolute masterpieces of historical fiction. When I visited Pompeii in my research, I felt like I could navigate the city through her protagonist Amara’s eyes. Those books are so tense, so human, so contemporary, and so richly researched.
Is there a book that changed your life?
This answer will not surprise anyone who’s read THE STOLEN WOMEN, but—Livy’s histories, specifically volume one, which covers the early years of Rome. Asking myself what it would take for a man like Livy to see Rome for all the harm its done was the seed that became THE STOLEN WOMEN.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be
published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I was at a summer camp for creative writers, and I’d totally given up on this book being my first. Before I left for work, I joked with my fiance that maybe some of the creative energy would “jostle loose” a book deal, and when it actually happened, I couldn’t believe it. I got to tell my students, who obviously knew I was on submission, and when they cheered for me, I cried.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
I’m an eclectic reader—probably the best throughline is that I like books that deliver on what they promise but also give a little more. When I was writing THE STOLEN WOMEN, I read a ton of noirs and neo-noirs.
What’s your favorite movie?
I have two, for different moods: George of the Jungle, and the 2018 remake of Suspiria. My tastes lean more towards the latter, though, and I think Dogtooth by Yorgos Lanthimos is an almost perfect film.
What is your favorite season?
Fall. I have so many great scarves. I like winter, too—partly why I moved to Minnesota.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Every year I hold my annual Cheese Party. It’s a hoot. My fiance and I provide a basic assortment of fancy cheeses, and also expected pairings like jams, nuts, breads, crackers, fruits. Then I ask every attendee to bring a wildcard food item that you’d think would never go with cheese, and we all compete to make the best cheese bite. Everything gets scored by taste, presentation, and audacity, and the winner gets to bring home any leftover cheeses they want. It’s a perfect party, even if no one loves it as much as I do.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I never find enough people to talk about Netflix’s The Decameron with. It’s exactly the kind of historical fiction I love; rooted in a researched love of a time period, but made completely with modern audiences in mind. The characters are zany, anachronistic, hilarious, and then come together in really moving ways.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
I was a vegetarian for over a decade before a dietitian convinced me to begin eating fish. Now I’m obsessed with salmon. Miso-glazed is my favorite, but I love it in sushi, in poke bowls, cooked with rice. I’m very into salmon right now. But my mom would tell you my favorite is Kraft mac and cheese, and she’d be right, too.
What do you do when you have free time?
I play a lot of games. I love MMOs in particular, and have a particular game I play with friends from my graduate program whenever I get a free moment. In December, I’ll be watching a lot of women’s hockey—go Frost!
What can readers expect from you next?
Historical fiction that has bearing on the now. But more specifically, I’m in the research-and-drafting stage on two different projects, one set in Venice in the 15th century, and another in pre-WWI Vienna. I know these sound far from Ancient Rome, but I see the three books together as sort of a how-fascism-came-to-be trilogy. I’m often remixing those themes when I’m writing anything; what is Empire, how do we depict it in art and in story, how do we fight it when we’re just one person… You can expect to see those themes in any book with my name on it.
Narrator: Tovah Ott
A Novel
A case of missing noble women and a determined young warrior who sets out to bring them home in this new and exciting ancient historical set just before the founding of Rome, for fans of The Song of Achilles, Circe, and A Thousand Ships.
Safinia is fine to focus on her training as a warrior, providing for her sisters, and minding her own business. She feels no great need to meddle in anyone else's, until women in her town, including her former lover, begin disappearing. Quietly, at first, but disappearing just the same. All of the missing women have vanished from powerful households, but their formidable fathers are in utter denial, claiming their daughters are off on trips, sure to be back shortly, with perfectly reasonable explanations for their absences.
Dissatisfied with the half-hearted attempts to hand wave away the alarming and mysterious cases of the vanishing women, Safinia takes matters into her own hands, embarking on a journey to a neighboring village in search of answers or at the very least clues that might unearth threads she can begin to pull at. Along the way, she meets an unlikely yet helpful search partner, a historian who calls himself Livy. But despite his eerie sense of knowledge, Safinia is unable to uncover to missing women, thwarted more often than not by the girls' fathers themselves. As war with Rome looms on the horizon, Safinia must face the reality that the only one she can trust to bring them home is herself.
Alysandra Dutton has crafted an expertly researched and indepth look at the Sabine women, one of history's most overlooked yet crucial stories that has inspired countless works of art throughout the centuries. It's a fresh, page-turning adventure, perfect for readers of Madeline Miller and Natalie Haynes.
LGBTQ | Fiction Family Life | Coming of Age [ Park Row, On Sale: October 27, 2026, Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook, ISBN: 9780778306801 / eISBN: 9780369776099 ]
Alysandra Dutton is a Twin Cities-based writer working on stories about art history, femininity, and blood. She has enjoyed support & recognition from The Walton Family Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, the AWP Intro Journals Project, and the Bread Loaf Writer’s Workshop. Fiction from her collection-in-progress can be read in The Sun, Catapult, and forthcoming in Electric Literature, and essays in Cartridge Lit and Salt Hill Journal. She is at work on a neo-noir thriller about the founding of Rome, researched on-site at the British School at Rome with support from the Sturgis International Fellowship. Currently she is a teaching artist with The Loft Literary Center & Interlochen Arts Camp.
She is represented by Lucy Carson.
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