North America is divided into the Group of Keys that controls all the wealth and the weather. In her vision of the future, “livestock diseases and avian influenzas, global warming, water commodification, corporate war, overpopulation” have devastated the planet. With The Droughtlanders, Mac takes the speculative fiction approach to social commentary. Granted, Kentucky is the only state I’ve been to that considers macaroni and cheese a vegetable. “Kentucky, North Carolina, Utah–those sorts of states–would rather I didn’t write books for children,” Mac says.

Some school districts in the US have already banned her books.

“I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before a) noticed b) they’re banned, or c) it could be that they just don’t purchase those sorts of things anymore so that it doesn’t even become an option.” I ask her what impact the Surrey School Board’s decision to ban some gay books from its libraries will likely have on her career. This year saw the release of two new Mac books: the queer-themed young adult novel Crush and book one of the Triskelia Trilogy, The Droughtlanders. I really do think high school is hell on earth for most kids.” “I wouldn’t trade it for the world but it certainly wasn’t easy. “I was a big old druggie,” she says with a laugh. Raised in Bible-thumping Abbotsford, Mac dropped out of high school in Grade 11. “The bullies in the book are based on the bullies I had in high school.” If you didn’t have the money all through childhood to buy the right clothes you just sort of embraced the freakishness,” she says. “I was a fat, four-eyed, queer kid with no money. Loosely based on the murder of Reena Virk, Mac drew on her own troubled youth for her vivid depictions of high school bullying. Last year, Mac’s book The Beckoners won the Arthur Ellis award for crime fiction for young adult readers. Her Lisa Loeb looks would suggest that she’s right, but as she leans her elbow across the table, tattooed flames shoot out of the cuff of her blouse and lick at her wrist, like something dying to get out.

Mac insists she’s not the “edgy” and “disturbed” writer that publicists and reviewers portray her to be.

The Droughtlanders by Carrie Mac