Casey McQuiston

About Casey McQuiston

Casey McQuiston was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1991 and studied journalism at Louisiana State University. Before turning to fiction full-time, they worked a series of jobs in food service, freelance writing, and magazine publishing. McQuiston has spoken openly about writing their debut novel in the aftermath of grief and mental health struggles following their father's death, and about how growing up attending a conservative evangelical school shaped their determination to write openly queer stories. McQuiston is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns.

Red, White & Royal Blue and Beyond

Published in 2019, Red, White & Royal Blue imagines a romance between the son of a U.S. president and a prince of the British royal family, born out of a manufactured public friendship that turns unexpectedly real. The novel became a New York Times bestseller, won Best Debut Novel and Best Romance at the 2019 Goodreads Choice Awards, and was adapted into a feature film. McQuiston has since published the sapphic time-travel romance One Last Stop (2021), the young adult novel I Kissed Shara Wheeler (2022)—a Stonewall Honor Book—and the adult romance The Pairing (2024). Their work is widely credited with helping bring LGBTQ+ romantic comedy into mainstream commercial fiction, and McQuiston was named to the Time 100 Next list in 2022.

Why Red, White & Royal Blue Has Been Challenged

Objections to the novel have focused almost entirely on its depiction of a romantic and sexual relationship between two young men, with challenges typically citing its sexual content as inappropriate for school libraries. Across the catalog tracked here, McQuiston's work has been challenged or restricted in 7 states and 36 school districts, placing it among the more frequently contested contemporary romance titles as debates over LGBTQ+ representation in school collections have intensified.