As part of this year’s Manchester Literature Festival, Contact Theatre played host to two of the biggest recent stars of the fantasy genre in the UK, Samantha Shannon and Saara El-Arifi, both hot off the back of new releases in their respective bestselling fantasy series.
Samantha Shannon describes her new book, Among the Burning Flowers, as a prologue and “deepening of the lore” to her breakout critical and commercial darling, The Priory of the Orange Tree. Based on the fictional country of Yscalin, which Shannon models on 16th-century Spain, it tells the story of a nation facing the looming, apocalyptic threat of a war with dragons. Shannon promises that the book acts as a “relatively self-contained” and more accessible entry point to her Fantasy series, Roots of Chaos, for people (such as myself) who have been put off by the gargantuan page count of her other novels.
Since bursting onto the scene in 2022, Saara El-Arifi has been impressively prolific. She was here to promote Cursebound, the second book in her Faebound series, which itself began before she finished her initial trilogy of fantasy novels. Potentially falling into the “Romantasy” subgenre, El-Arifi spoke in the session about a lack of consensus on the matter. Cursebound finds the two elven sisters of the previous novel attempting to subvert war with the magical Fae.
The discussion, hosted by Manchester-based fantasy writer Eliza Chan, began on the topic of influences. Chan asked the pair what they read growing up, a more fun and often revealing topic than the classic question of simply the inspiration behind the books. El-Arifi spoke more generally about her childhood and how, most importantly, she was “a really, really good liar”, something she described as being “the crux of most authors”. She confessed to once convincing a cousin that she had fifteen boyfriends, as well as constantly writing scripts and playing the part of the dictatorial director, making anyone she knew act in them.
More focused on books, Shannon spoke about how she mostly grew up on contemporary literature, “a lot of Jacqueline Wilson” specifically. When it comes to fantasy, both were quick to mention the influence of Tolkien, although with reservations. Shannon told a story of how, when she was around ten, she loved the Lord of the Rings films (something she said she still watches every month or so), with her favourite scene being Eowyn riding against the Nazgul to rescue Frodo Baggins. She then made her dad take her to the book shop to buy the books.
Spoilers for anyone who hasn’t read a book series that is coming up on a century old now; instead of Eowyn in the books who rescues Frodo, it is a male elf named Glorfindel. “I was so fragile and I was so upset by this that I just didn’t read fantasy for years,” Shannon says, slightly jokingly but also seriously remarking on how it made her feel like there was no place for her in fantasy.
El-Arifi also cites Tolkien as an early, strong influence, but similarly to Shannon, remarks on being let down by the groups excluded from the narrative. She speaks about being horrified by the realisation that of the entire three-film trilogy, only 45 seconds were devoted to people of colour and that “all of entire 45 seconds was orcs grunting.” She held this up as a key influence on the way she writes her fantasy, “[I was] really putting the two fingers up to the fantasy genre. I was like, fuck you,” and created the world of her first novel The Final Strife with “not one white person in sight”.
The goal of creating fantasy worlds that are not dominated by white, blonde, blue-eyed races follows across El-Arifi’s work. Within the Faebound series, the example her and Chan both focused on was the creature named the Obeah. She directly lifted the name from a West-African word, which El-Arifi describes as a “very fluid idea of magic in West African culture”. The appearance of the creature, it turns out, also originates in West Africa. El-Arifi recalled a clearly formative childhood memory of being told there was a leopard watching them while trekking in Ghana as a child, which inspired the Obeah’s large feline design.
Both writers discussed the ways in which the real world informs their fantasy world-building. Shannon spoke about how every nation she writes in her fantasy worlds has a direct real-life counterpart, “I use it as a touchstone for things like language, food, clothing, history, that sort of thing.” She specifically cited Phillip II of Spain as a figure of fascination when crafting her latest novel. She describes writing like this as a way of engaging in history without the restrictions that one might face with historical fiction as a genre – “I get to play with history through a slightly different lens and twist it the middle.”
After an increasingly-deep lore chat, the question turned to their writing processes. While Shannon offered that she needs to give herself breaks, sometimes with walks, sometimes with video games (Baldur’s Gate 3 was mentioned to audience cheers), El Arifi offered something a little more beguiling to both her fellow authors and the audience. Following in the lineage of Dalton Trumbo, “I write in the bath,” El-Arifi stated, surprised that there was any shock at this methodology. “I have a plank of wood and it goes over the bath,” she says to the incredulity of Chan, and a knowing giggle from Shannon, who was clearly familiar with this part of El-Arifi’s process, “Cursebound was exclusively written in the bath. I have a plank of wood and my laptop on top and I tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, and that’s it.”
When the session turned to audience questions, alongside (perhaps unsurprisingly) questions about the bath set-up, the question of Tik-Tok labels and tropes was bought up. There was a general sense of resentment towards their use in book marketing and discourse, something that Shannon echoed. She specifically cited the “knife to the throat” trope (which I can’t say I’m familiar with, but a quick Google tells me exactly what it describes). “Don’t get me wrong, I love a knife to the throat, but I’m like, who’s holding the knife to whose throat? Because that’s going to depend on my interest level.” There is a strong sense of frustration at the lack of interest in the characters and narrative in exchange for easily marketable buzz-words.
El-Arifi however, is more generous about the idea. “I think it has its uses, particularly for shining a light on books that wouldn’t necessarily have been picked up,” she says. With the current attention span economy where there is a sense that you need to give a 5-second pitch to sell a book, being able to say it’s enemies-to-lovers and leave it at that is undeniably useful. “It does help everyone ultimately.”
The session ended with a tease of what both writers have coming next. For Shannon, next year is a year off with her next book due for a 2027 release. For El-Arifi, the opposite was true. Her next book is a foray out of fantasy and into historical fiction with a retelling of Cleopatra, due in February. After that, there will be plenty more to come – “I have 11 books under contract at the moment”, she told the audience, with the plan being two books out a year until at least 2027. “I will take a break after that,” she tells a concerned-looking Chan, only for Shannon to reply that El-Arifi had been telling her that for years now.
Among the Burning Flowers and Cursebound are available now in Hardback.
For more coverage of the 2025 Manchester Literature Festival, please see below:
Manchester Literature Festival: 8 must-see events
Sarah Hall & Daisy Johnson at Manchester Literature Festival: folklore and new voices
