FIRST ACQUISITION OF 2020: THE HALF-CLASS, BY KAYVION LEWIS

"Escape your class; define yourself."

Today, The Parliament House Press is proud to announce its first acquisition of the season: THE HALF-CLASS is the first installment in a fantasy trilogy featuring a timely message of inclusion, equality, and perseverance.

Louisiana-based author Kayvion Lewis tells the #OwnVoices tale of a girl torn between two classes in a race-divided empire. Seventeen year-old Evie's complexion is too rich to belong to the illustrious White Class, and too fair to blend with the lowly Dark Class. By day, she's forced to keep her head down—but by night, she rebels.

View her submissions video below!

“The Half-Class is a story not just featuring a biracial main character, but about the struggles and conflicting, complicated problems that so many of us who can’t be categorized face. It’s still its own story, one with romance and rebellion, kings and courts, but introduces an interplay with race and discrimination too. If I had to simplify things, I’d call it a complicated love story with some heavy real-world implications, which I wrote because I wanted to see more fiction not just with a character who looked like me, but whose struggles because of that race I could relate to.”

- Kayvion Lewis, The Half-Class

The Half-Class, by Kayvion Lewis

By day, Evie is an outcast—a Half-Class. Complexion too rich for the illustrious white class, and too fair for the lowly dark class, she is forced to keep her head down and her paperwork ready. But by night, she rebels, burning down municipal buildings and raiding shops with her fellow half-classes by her side. It's a dangerous life, but it's simple. At least, it used to be.

But when Prince Cass walks into her aunt's brothel, life gets complicated. She and the awkward prince inadvertently hit it off, and her fellow rebels see a golden opportunity to find out exactly what the king is planning for the half-class.

Day by day, Evie grows closer to Prince Cass, who's a tho