Diversity in fiction is not rewriting history—it’s restoring it.
About
Photography by Happy-Hour Headshots
Zoe Sivak advocates for the restoration of diverse stories and characters to historical fiction. In her writing, she strives to explore famous male figures through the lens of the women beside them—women who could have existed, even if history left them behind.
When not engrossed in historical research, Zoe develops maternal health projects in Philadelphia, PA, where she lives with her partner and two keyboard-loving cats.
Books
Now Available for Pre-Order!
from Berkley|Random House
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Based on the true story of Alessandro de’ Medici, this sweeping novel follows a Black woman’s secret plot to put her son on a Renaissance throne.
In 1490, a dark-skinned baby girl arrives at the Santo Spirito foundling hospital with a bronze dagger strapped to her chest. Raised by Iye, a scarred African nurse who teaches her to fight and survive, Simonetta refuses the only futures offered to foundling girls: nun or wife.
She has bigger plans.
Years later, when a midnight brawl leaves exiled prince Lorenzo de’ Medici owing her his life, Simonetta talks her way into the legendary Medici family—and finds herself falling for the beloved Medici son. But her dark skin and sharp tongue make enemies, and when the family accuses her of witchcraft, she’s forced to reveal her secret weapon: she’s pregnant with a potential Medici heir.
Alessandro’s birth should secure her place in the family. Instead, it makes her their prisoner.
Her own ambitions thwarted, Simonetta is determined to do anything—lie, cheat, and kill—to put Alessandro on Florence’s throne. European empires feed on the growing African slave trade, and the biracial boy threatens everything her enemies believe about power, bloodlines, and Simonetta’s legacy.
As the gulf between mother and son widens, Simonetta must choose between the crown she sacrificed everything for and the son who wears it.
Sylvie de Rosiers, the biracial daughter of a rich planter in 1791 Saint-Domingue, is both a lady born to privilege and a damning reminder of her father’s infidelity with an enslaved woman. After a violent slave uprising begins the Haitian Revolution, Sylvie and her brother leave their parents and old lives behind to flee unwittingly into another uprising—austere and radical Paris. Sylvie quickly becomes enamored with the aims of the Revolution, as well as with the revolutionaries themselves—most notably Maximilien Robespierre and his mistress, Cornélie Duplay.
As a rising leader and abolitionist, Robespierre sees an opportunity to exploit Sylvie’s race and abandonment of her aristocratic roots as an example of his ideals, while the strong-willed Cornélie offers Sylvie guidance in free thought and a safe harbor. Sylvie battles with her past complicity in a slave society and her future within this new world order as she finds herself increasingly tugged between Robespierre's ideology and Cornélie's love.
When the Reign of Terror descends, she must decide whether to become an accomplice while another kingdom rises on the bones of innocents…or risk losing her head.
Now Available in Paperback!
from Berkley|Random House
contact
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