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| Hello and welcome back to Book Fest Long Reads: our monthly email series where we delve into our archive, bringing you the most relevant and resonant words from some of the incredible writers and thinkers who have spoken at the Festival over the years. These 10 – 15 minute reads are designed to be savoured, so pop the kettle on and settle in.
In this edition, you’ll find the words of Samantha Shannon, Caleb Femi, V E Schwab, and Melinda Salisbury as they each meditate on the role of fantasy and folklore – the way it imagines a world beyond our own, sometimes reflecting real life back at us. |
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| Before you dive in, a note to say: we hope you’ve enjoyed our Long Reads over the last few months. As the Festival draws ever closer, the series will be taking a little hiatus (but not for too long!). In the meantime, we’ll still be in touch via our regular e-bulletins and social media – so make sure you’re subscribed to catch all our Book Festival updates, and Long Reads will be back in your inbox in Autumn. |
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Samantha Shannon on fantasy and history
Transcribed from her 14 August 2024 event
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Samantha Shannon is the internationally bestselling author of fantasy series The Bone Season (the fifth instalment of which was published last month), and The Roots of Chaos (which includes The Priory of the Orange Tree, a feminist retelling of Saint George and the Dragon).
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| “I think fantasy is a really fascinating genre because it’s not a genre that’s obliged to reflect the real world in any capacity. Like, it’s a genre of complete possibility. The authors’ imagination is the only limit. And that’s the reason I’ve always been very drawn to it.
I’m just fascinated by the fact that there are so many different types of fantasy – you can filter fantasy through any person and it’s always going to be vastly different. But it is also a genre that’s flexible in terms of it interacting with the real world – you know, you can have fantasy like [R F Kuang’s Babel] which is set in a real historical period with changes, or you can have fantasy based on historical periods like mine are. So, A Day of Fallen Night is broadly based on the Middle Ages, and then The Priory of the Orange Tree is more based on the kind of 16th and 17th centuries. You can do that, or you don’t have to base it on history at all.
And I’ve had some fascinating conversations about this. There is this very time-honoured relationship between fantasy and history in the real world, to the point that when we’re talking about shows like Game of Thrones, for example, you hear the words ‘historical accuracy’ thrown around. Which is so interesting because I remember when I was still on Twitter (which was a really terrible time of my life) there were lots of conversations about, you know, historical accuracy and fantasy and it was kind of aimed specifically at, for example, marginalised groups or women. And people would say things like, ‘Oh, women didn’t do this back in the old days, so why is this happening in my fantasy novel?’ But it didn’t matter that there were dragons, which is so fascinating. And I’ve always been so interested in that. But I think it’s a great tool for… it’s a good way to talk about the real world and politics and issues that the author cares about, but there is this filter on it. It’s like looking at it, you know, through a glass darkly. And I think that’s a great thing about it.
So, we can use it as a way to talk about the real world, we don’t have to. There’s just so many ways you can engage with fantasy, which is why I love it.” |
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Caleb Femi on not wanting to be let off the hook
Transcribed from his 2021 event
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| Caleb Femi is a poet and director. His short films have been commissioned by the BBC and Channel 4 and his poems have been selected by the Tate Modern, The Royal Society for Literature and many more. His latest book – The Wickedest – is a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and one of The Guardian’s Best Poetry Books of 2024 |
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| “If you’re from a particular community, a tight knit one, folklore is something that is present. I don’t even think it’s necessarily exclusive to my community, I think anywhere that you’ve grown up and it’s a proper community… I lived for a few years in Central London: there was no community there … just a ghost town. But if you do live in those sort of communities, folklore in one sense or another: it’s just a part of life, really. Growing up, in North Peckham estate – it was normal. Surrealism, fantasy was just something that was embedded in our everyday experience. There was, you know, like rumours of that neighbour over there who, like, turned into a cat one day. There’s another neighbour over there who ran through a wall one time – the bailiffs were heavily on their tail…
So, to me as a young child, those stories were real to me. I grew up in a community where everyone talks in parables and you know, older people – I remember, like, older than my parents – they just spoke so flamboyantly, metaphorically. And as a seven-year-old, you actually just take it on a literal level. And you just like believe that there is gold at the end of the rainbow and all of that stuff there. When then writing about my experience in this community, it’s going to by default have surrealist elements … I think it’s nice to hammer home that point. Because, when we think about council estates, when we think about all of that kind of stuff and those people … those aren’t the people who go to Hogwarts, you know what I mean?” |
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V E Schwab and Melinda Salisbury on fantasy as a way to understand and navigate teenagedom
Transcribed from their 19 August 2022 event
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| V E Schwab is a bestselling fantasy author, best known for the Shades of Magic series and The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue which was nominated for the 2020 Locus Award for Best Fantasy novel. Her books explore the lines between hero and villian, fantasy and reality, good and evil and life and death. |
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“I think fantasy is a way of understanding reality. It always has been, whether you’re talking about children’s or adult fantasy. It’s a lens. It’s also a metaphor; it’s a stand in for things we’re feeling.
It’s a stand in for the state of the world and when you think about what YA is as a genre, so often it cycles around the idea of firsts. Everyone likes to make that about the romance side of it – first love, first time, first kiss – but it’s also our characters who are at that extraordinarily frustrating place that we have all been at; when you are at the cusp of adulthood. Where you are suddenly told that you should be understanding the world around you, that you should be as [Melinda Salisbury] said, performing in a very specific way to the world around you.
It’s a terrifying place to be. We treat it as a liberation but it’s not really! Suddenly you are supposed to know what to do, you’re supposed to behave in certain ways. You still feel like a child. You’re in a body that’s assuming grown-up-hood and it’s an incredibly terrifying and empowering place to be – it’s two sides of the same coin. It’s why I think it’s such a beautiful space to write in when we’re thrust into the discomfort of becoming a full human in the eyes of the world around us.” |
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| Melinda Salisbury is the four-time Carnegie nominated and bestselling author of multiple YA novels including The Sin Eater’s Daughter series and the State of Sorrow duology. Her most recent book – The Foundation – is a teen schi-fi thriller offering up a chilling vision of where tech might take us. |
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“What draws me to [the magical powers of fantasy] is, I didn’t have a great teenage-hood for various reasons. I was a nerd and a loner and kind of awkward and weird, so I didn’t get to do any of the cool, sexy, fun teenage things that I write about now, and my characters get to do on my behalf.
What I’d have liked is the feeling of actually coming into power, because as Victoria [V E Schwab] said it’s so arbitrary, but you turn eighteen and suddenly you are a grown-up.
Up until then it’s just school. You’re taught how to repeat things, how to write things down and you are taught to behave in this way that you’ve had no training for at all apart from the examples of other people around you.
So I think what fantasy worlds give younger readers is a place where teenagers can have power and also room to learn and grow and test that power in a safe space. It’s not often easy to find in our world a safe space to really test your limits without running the risk of hurting yourself or others.
It’s exploring a different way of being, so you get to play with the idea of being powerful and also see the downsides of power.
And in fantasy people don’t just become more powerful and everything is great. There’s a consequence to these powers and obviously, often lessons have to be learned in order for the teenagers to become their best selves and move into something that we’d call adulthood.
I think one of the beauties of writing fantasy, especially for teens is we create mirrors through which kids can see themselves and see themselves in positions of power in the world.” |
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