Racquel Marie

Ophelia After All follows a Cuban American girl who is obsessed with growing roses through the last weeks of school, working out that she likes a girl while everybody around her is consumed by prom. Marie is Cuban and Colombian American and wrote it while still at university. She has been explicit that she wanted a coming-out story in which the family is not the obstacle, because that version is rarely published. The roses carry the metaphor and she has the sense not to overwork them.