In 2015, she got invited to visit the set of The Bold and the Beautiful, and it was the best thing that has ever happened to her in her entire life. You can find Jodi on Twitter at where she tweets regularly about her research, her writing, cool things she finds interesting, her hero worship of Kate Bush, and her slightly-too-intense passion for The Bold and the Beautiful. It means that reading romance novels and watching (and let’s be real, writing huge amounts about) The Bachelor/ette is technically work for her. Her research focuses on representations of love in popular culture and fiction. When she’s not writing about clever girls and cunning fairies, Jodi is an academic. Her first novel, Valentine, was published in early 2017 by Penguin Teen Australia, and its sequel, Ironheart, will follow in. Currently, she lives in Melbourne, where she works as a Lecturer in Writing and Literature at Deakin University. Jodi is originally from Kiama, a seaside holiday town on the south coast of New South Wales, and has lived in a bunch of different cities: Canberra (where she did her undergrad degrees), Wollongong (where she lived while she did her PhD in Sydney), and Hobart (where she held her first academic job) among them. If Picnic at Hanging Rock meets Holly Black sounds like something you’d be into, these are the books for you. There are three books in the series available: Valentine (2017), Ironheart (2018), and Misrule (2019), all published by Penguin Teen Australia. It explores dominant cultural narratives around what makes a good female virginity loss experience by examining two key forms of popular literature: autobiographical virginity loss stories and popular romance fiction. Jodi is the author of the Valentine series, a young adult paranormal romance/urban fantasy series about smart girls, small towns, and scary fairies. This book is a study of female virginity loss and its representations in popular Anglophone literatures.

**Want to dip your toes into the Valentine universe? Try the free short story Galentine, set a year and a bit before the events of Valentine.

Ironheart jodi mcalister