With best-sellers like 2019’s Red, White & Royal Blue, author Casey McQuiston has been at the forefront of the queer rom-com novel boom of the past five years, and certainly knows a thing or two about titillating their audience. But the nonbinary author’s most recent love story, this year’s The Pairing, reaches even higher levels of heat. The 33-year-old Louisiana native burst onto the scene with Red, White & Royal Blue, a love story between the US president’s son and an English prince. The much-adored book was quickly adapted into a 2023 film by Matthew López starring Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine, and a sequel was soon confirmed with McQuiston working on the script.
Since that blockbuster debut, McQuiston has penned 2021’s One Last Stop, a time-traveling lesbian romance, and 2022’s I Kissed Shara Wheeler, a YA novel charting growing up queer in a Southern conservative Christian community. Now, this year’s The Pairing marks their most mature work to date. “It was fun to write a book where my main priorities were about art, culture, wine, food, and travel,” McQuiston told W. “I wanted to show that a queer romance and a trans romance doesn’t have to be necessarily about being queer and trans, as much as it can be about being horny.”
The novel, already a BookTok hit, follows nonbinary sommelier Theo and pastry chef Kit, two bisexual exes who reunite on a European food-and-wine tour filled with raunchy escapades. In their indulgent tour of the continent, the estranged lovers engage in an international hook-up contest. What could go wrong?
Below, for W’s Culture Diet series, McQuiston reflects on the relationship between food and romance, becoming attached to her characters and what might happen in the Red, White & Royal Blue sequel:
The Pairing seems to intentionally avoids framing nonbinary or queer identity as a plot point. What inspired this narrative decision?
It’s absolutely intentional. I think a lot about the word ‘important’ when it’s applied to queer fiction, and how there’s pressure for queer stories to justify their existence by having some kind of message or by inspiring people. I’m always very thankful it’s applied to my work, [but] at the same time, I was interested in challenging the idea of what a piece of art about queer and trans love had to be to exist. Sometimes, the important thing can be that it’s delightful, sexy, and about people existing as they are with how the different facets of their identity enhance and enrich their lives. But it’s not necessarily the point of the story.
How do you view the relationship of food and romance in the book?
I’m Southern, so I’m from a culture that celebrates feasting, abundance, and rich, rich, rich food. I’ve always seen food as inherently romantic. It’s this thing that you put into your body that can both nourish you and give pleasure. I mean, isn’t that what love is as well? Isn’t that what romance is? Those things are inherently linked. I was also exploring indulgence. As queer and trans people, we are often conditioned to make ourselves smaller, less intrusive, and more palatable. We deny ourselves things. Ultimately, this book is about denying yourself nothing. Food and sex are a vehicle for that.
Across your novels, your characters are always the heart of the story. How do you compare the central pairings in your books—for instance, Theo and Kit in The Pairing to Alex and Henry in Red, White and Royal Blue?
I’m open about being a character-first writer and [being] very attached to my characters. Someone on tour asked: ‘How do you detach after you finish a story to move on to the next?’ My answer is that I don’t. These characters are always living with me. I still think about them all the time. I learn from those pairings as I’m writing, challenging myself to [write] new dynamics and traits I haven’t played with before. It’s rewarding to write characters who could be friends but are also deeply different people. I always try to imagine whose paths would be most likely to cross if they were all in the same universe. I think the most likely scenario would be that Theo and Kit wind up having Alex and Henry as guests at their restaurant one day.
That’s a possibility if you write that in.
Maybe one day, like a little bonus nugget.
Well, I’m thinking of the film sequel.
Oh, that’s so true! I hadn’t even considered that possibility.
Speaking of the sequel, it must be nice to return to Alex and Henry again.
It’s also fun to play in a different world than the book. I see them as a version of Alex and Henry who had different circumstances that set them up on their paths toward each other, and so that’s gonna ripple along to the storytelling for them. It’s been interesting to sit down with Matthew to figure out how we bring in things from the book, while still allowing these two characters in this version of their story to find their way. All that to say, they could go to France and meet Theo and Kit because their future is wide open.
Let’s jump into the Culture Diet questions. What’s currently on your reading list?
Sometimes I have trouble sitting down to read a book if I’ve been working all day and staring at words. So, I listen to a lot of audiobooks on 1.2x speed with a crochet project or a video game. That’s my sweet spot for reading. I’ve been listening to You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi and Any Duchess Will Do by Tessa Dare. I just started reading When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill, and I just downloaded The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Do you have a writing playlist?
I do. I make a lot of playlists as I start developing characters. Generally, I can’t listen to anything with English words if I’m writing because it messes up my thought process. So I listen to a lot of movie soundtracks. When I was writing The Pairing it was the soundtrack to Howard’s End and Call Me By Your Name. Also, there’s a Spotify-curated playlist called Vintage Italian Summer, which I listened to a lot.
What was the last film you watched that you loved?
The last movie I saw and loved was Twisters, which I saw for the second time in the theaters. It’s a delightful romantic comedy inside a disaster movie, which are my two favorite genres. Every movie I watched in July was a horror. Then, before that, I was on a Godzilla kick.
If you had to pair The Pairing with a dish and a drink, what would it be?
To drink, I’m thinking of a boulevardier, which Theo orders at a dive bar in Paris. It’s basically like a French Negroni and with a little orange twist. For food, I’m thinking of a fresh pesto with basil from the farmers market and some homemade focaccia. I’m setting the bar high for what people are gonna make at home, but focaccia is quite approachable. Fresh pesto and homemade focaccia with little caramelized onions and some tiny bits of heirloom tomato.