The Shelbiad Interviews... Lizzie Fry!

 I spoke to Lizzie Fry about her new novel The Coven, witches, and TERFs!  

The Coven (2020) is an absolutely brilliant novel that imagines a world where witchcraft is a power inherited from mothers to daughters, with powers ranging from everyday kitchen witches to witches that draw magicks from crystals, and then elementals, that have affinities for Earth, Water, Air, or Fire. The novel also “imagines” that the US president is a populist misogynist that openly lies to the media with apparently no repercussions. If the novel’s president is so clearly like Trump, the FLOTUS is a far cry from mild, mildewy Melania. The president outlaws witches, imprisoning and torturing them, to the point where being a woman is almost synonymous with being a criminal. Except, of course, for the ‘Goodies’ - whence the Puritan ‘Goodwives’ - models of conservative, Christian wives. The Coven is an incredible marriage of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and Deborah Harkness’ A Discovery of Witches, but it is also uniquely itself – I haven’t read anything so fresh and exciting in a long while!  

 

If you haven’t read it yet, go out and do so now (and then come back and read this blog post because, you know, spoilers).

 

I will start with the traditional, maybe passé, “where did you get your inspiration from” question. What literary figures or authors really inspire you? 

 

Oh, certainly Margaret Atwood! I love her work more generally and I love The Handmaid’s Tale; I loved The Testaments, too, in some ways even more than The Handmaid’s Tale, because I really enjoyed the TV series and I love how the TV show storylines were threaded into The Testaments.  

 

As a screenwriter, I see how TV, movies, social media, and literature are all connected - we’re in an era of connectivity and these things all go together. It’s transmedia. We’re in a golden age of transmedia – lots of different ideas and intellectual property is being explored in so many exciting ways. Think of Marvel, for example, the way that TV, film, comics are all tied together, and people of all ages, races, genders, and sexualities are seeing their stories being told in a variety of connected mediums. Marvel inspired me because they explore important topics, and people can see themselves in the stories, as well as seeing why bad people are the way they are, why they do what they do.  

Art by Noma Bar

"Imagine that the US President is a populist demagogue” - At the time of writing, this probably didn’t really take much imagination. I was wondering if you could talk about what real-world events influenced you. 

 

Obviously Trump and the whole MAGA thing and white supremacy, the backlash against BLM in particular. The “grab them by the pussy” thing really influenced me, because that happened BEFORE he was elected and you thought women wouldn’t support that, but he had a horde of female fans. It got me thinking of white women’s roles holding up patriarchal control. That’s why we’ve got Karens and Beckies who are, in effect, standing on the necks of people of Colour, benefitting from their continued oppression. 

 

The way white “feminists”, who describe themselves as liberal and left leaning and everything, throw in their lot with Christian fundamentalists to protest rights for trans people. It’s horrible because trans women are women, and as a queer woman, we owe so many of our rights to trans women of colour. That’s why I wrote the character Callie the way I did, she’s a Black trans woman and she’s an incredibly powerful elemental witch, important and respected. I also wanted to make the point that Tansy (a very powerful elemental witch) wasn’t great, since she kicked Callie out of the coven because she is trans. 

 

While I was thinking about this book, there was a row on twitter where trans exclusionary feminists were calling themselves Goodies. “Goody” was a form of address for women in Puritan New England, a shortening of Goodwife; during the Salem Witch Trials, many of the women were addressed as Goody, and it was used to differentiate between the good wives and the witches. These women on Twitter thought they were being so clever, making out that they were the oppressed ones, when Goodies actually maintained – and benefitted from – the regime. 

 

There is also a geographical aspect, because you live in Devon, right? And that’s a really important place in the novel & it ties in interestingly with the history of witch trials in the UK? 

 

Yes! Exeter was the last place to hang a witch… officially, that is: I don’t believe it truly was. Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles, and Susannah Edwards were from Bideford in Devon and they were tried in Exeter, resulting in their hanging, despite the fact that all the evidence was hearsay. This has since become known as the Bideford witch trial, and is reported as the last case of witches to be hanged in England, although there were later cases that just were not as well documented. There’s also Boscastle (in Cornwall, where there is now a Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, and that is considered to be England’s answer to Salem) and the drowning pools. 

I’m from Devon, and we learned about all of this in school. 

 

When I used to be a teacher in Exeter, I would eat my sandwiches by the monument to the Bideford Witches and think “I want to write a book about that”.

 

In the novel, there are kitchen witches, crystal witches, and elementals. I wonder if you could talk about why you chose these? And why is it that women draw power from these areas? 

 

These all exist in reality! Obviously we have witchcraft and Wicca in the real world, and these are actually all types of witches. I just took a more literal approach! Witches in the real world don’t, for example, have lightning shooting from their hands, but for the sake of genre, for the fantasy elements of The Coven, I made the witchcraft more tangible. 

 

Although I’m not one myself, I know witches, and I did lots of research talking to witches and people who practise witchcraft all around the world. I didn’t want to do an anglocentric version of witchcraft, so I spoke to witches from across Africa and America, asking them how they saw witchcraft as empowering them and what it means to them, and then I mixed it with fantasy. I wanted to centre the theme of powerful women being a source of fear. 

 

There is also commentary on being naturally talented, like elementals, versus having to study and work hard; having innate magic based on your – for lack of a better word and recalling anti-trans ideas here – biology compared to having to work on it. In my book, they’re both equal. Marianne (the FLOTUS and main antagonist in the novel) is so jealous of the women with innate power. She is really powerful but doesn’t see that, she’s too busy hating every other woman. 

It’s like Stephen King says “talent is as cheap as table salt” – as a writer myself, and someone who teaches writing, it’s more important to work hard than it is to simply be gifted. 

 

'Fertility Goddess' by Anastasia Catris

So, The Shelbiad is mostly focused on my research into contemporary feminist retellings of Greek myth. Let’s talk about Hecate, the ancient Greek goddess of Witchcraft! Who is she to you? 

 

Hecate’s role in the novel is not something that I spent a great deal of time thinking about. I wanted to pick a female goddess who wasn’t Diana, who I think is overdone, and I didn’t want to replicate A Discovery of Witches, where the main character is called Diana in reference to the goddess. Equally, I didn’t want to talk about Circe for the same reason, because of Madeline Miller’s novel. Personally, Hecate’s my favourite because she always seemed darker, more vengeful and... more goth!

 

While we’re talking Greek myth, I used the plot archetype of the hero’s journey.   

 

Is Adelita your Odysseus, then? To a certain extent, yes. I didn’t want to do it from Chloe’s perspective, because the “chosen one” narrative, the idea of that lone child that needs to change the world, always annoys me. Teenagers are still children and need a lot of guidance and support. Whereas someone in their early 40s, like Adelita, will know what’s going on in the world and they have life experiences that they’re bringing to the table. Also, it was really important to me that two WOC were at the forefront: I’m not putting white women at the heart of the story. 

 

No, the white woman is the villain, instead. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says “you know what, I’m going to be a villain”. Even Trump doesn’t think he’s the bad guy. I love writing villains. In the screenwriting world, villains have become more nuanced, and we spend a lot of time in writing rooms theorising about the villain’s motives, as opposed to the black-and-white antagonist who just does bad things because they’re a monster. 

 

 

Which brings us to the Triumvirate - the Maiden, Mother, Crone - do you think this is an empowering model? Which one do you identify with? 

'Maiden, Mother, Crone' by Anastasia Catris

It can be empowering, but it can also be a cage. I don’t think these models are good or bad, it depends what you do with them. Systems are only as good as their worst member, just look at the institutional racism within, say, the police force or the medical industry.  

 

I’m probably all three, like most women. It just depends on the context of my life. Being a mother is a big part of my identity – I was a teenage mother and, because we celebrate virgins in our society, as soon as you become a teen mother you’re told that you’re damaged goods and your life is ruined. Yet we demand sexuality from young girls, but then when we do see sexuality they become whores - as a woman, you can’t win. 

 

As a teacher and a middle-aged woman, I’m also the crone. I teach via my website about writing and social justice. As the mother and crone, I can educate people on attitudes towards racism, classism, and cancel culture. It’s really important to me as a queer woman to also advocate for the importance of hearing LGBTQ+ stories, as well as moving away from “colour blind” narratives - you do see race, and it’s important that we understand that. 

 

As for the maiden, a lot of the time I feel a bit like I’ve left the maiden behind. I look back at her and I feel sorry for my younger, maiden self. Having said that, I love myself as the maiden, because that’s where my optimism comes from, and I’m still optimistic, so she’s still with me there. 

 

I just have two more quick questions. Which type of witch would you like to be? 

 

Hecate, mother of the crossroads
by Tracy Dixon

An Earth witch! Not just because they’re the most powerful in my world, although obviously I want to be the most powerful woman in the world. I would love to have their powers, I would love to use ley lines as geofences and know things before they happen (the power called psyche in the novel). 

 

For Tansy, being an Earth elemental takes her to a really dark place because she comes into her magic too young. I knew things too young, too, and I nearly went down a dark, destructive path. I could’ve been Tansy; I could’ve viewed everyone with suspicion and been abusive. She's my dark double. 

 

And, I wouldn’t be much of an interviewer if I didn’t ask: what can we expect next from Lizzie Fry? 

 

I’ve got a book coming out in 2022! There are no parallel worlds or witches drawing their power from the dark side of the moon, this time. It is set more in this reality, but with the kind of high concept thriller vibe you’ve come to expect from Lizzie Fry! It’s about serial killers and feminism, and how to get ahead at work. We’ve got another character like Marianne who is trying to get ahead at work, and so she decides to kill people. There’s a lot in there about the glass ceiling; how women get passed over in the workplace or men take credit for their work. 

 

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Thank you so much to Lucy V. Hay / Lizzie Fry for taking time to answer my questions. You can buy The Coven HERE or from your local bookstore. 

 

Find out more about the author’s other works by clicking HERE and you can get writing tips from her platform BANG2WRITE. Stay updated on the author's work by following Lucy V. Hay on Instagram, or Lizzie Fry on Facebook or Twitter! 

 

 

Some answers have been edited down for clarity and concision.