6 Books with Helen Marshall

Helen Marshall is the World Fantasy Award-winning author of two short story collections, two poetry chapbooks and her first novel, The Migration. Her stories and poetry have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Abyss & Apex, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Tor.com. She is the author of the forthcoming The Lady, The Tiger and the Girl Who Loved Death.

Today she tells us about her Six Books.

1. What book are you currently reading?

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford. I'm on a big speculative detective kick after working my way through Nick Harkaway’s Titanium Noir series. I love how science fiction melds with detective stories—they’re both fundamentally about investigating the way the world works, peeling back layers to reveal hidden truths. There’s something so satisfying about that combination of mystery and speculation, where the detective isn’t just solving a crime but uncovering how reality itself functions. Detective stories often end with “and this is how the world is—we’ve just uncovered the truth of it,” while SF stories end with “and here are the possibilities.” I find it fascinating to see which way an author is going to leap when they're combining both genres.

2. What upcoming book are you really excited about?

Kathleen Jennings’ Honeyeater. Kathleen is one of the most interesting, curious, and creative people I’ve ever met. She has a poet’s attention to language, an artist’s attention to detail, and a novelist’s attention to world-building. Everything she touches becomes something extraordinary—her illustrations, her short fiction, her academic work. We’re actually working on a non-fiction book about writing speculative short stories together, and I snuck a peek at the first page of Honeyeater and immediately wanted to slip the book into my bag and abscond with it. I have a feeling this book is going to be something genuinely special and surprising.

3. Is there a book you’re currently itching to read again?

Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta. I read it during the pandemic and it was absolutely perfect—that rare kind of fantasy that completely transports you to another world that’s strange, wonderful, and utterly immersive. It’s about two girls living in a whale made of dreams, which sounds impossible to pull off, but Tashan makes it feel inevitable. The book has this incredible sense of wonder mixed with deep emotional truth. I genuinely think this represents the future of fantasy writing—bold, inventive, unafraid to take risks that pay off beautifully.

4. How about a book you’ve changed your mind about—either positively or negatively?
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. It’s a book I reread every couple of years, but each time I discover more to appreciate—more depth arising from apparent simplicity, more emotional resonance hidden in what seems like a straightforward fairy tale. It reminds me again and again of the beauty of the form of the fairy tale, how it speaks to our longing and honours the craving we have for mystery and meaning—something fantasy is deeply interested in. Increasingly I have been thinking about how becoming a mother has changed me as a writer. Like, it rewrote the emotional landscape of my world and charged it in new ways, some of which have been quite confronting and difficult to manage. For example, I am so sensitized, so raw, that I find horror writing much more difficult than I have in the past. But this book brings me a sense of comfort and joy. My husband read it to me while I was pregnant to help me sleep, so it holds a very special place in my heart now.

5. What’s one book you read as a child or young adult that has had a lasting influence on your writing?

Impro by Keith Johnstone. As a university student, I was terrified of public speaking, so I took an improv course out of what I can only describe as a mixture of self-hatred and self-improvement. But this book taught me so much about creating narrative on the fly—how to understand the shifting balance between characters, how to build toward satisfying endings, how to say “yes, and...” to unexpected possibilities. The principles of improvisation—accepting offers, building on what others give you, finding the story in the moment—have become central to how I approach both writing and life. It’s not technically a writing book, but it’s one of the most useful books about storytelling I’ve ever read.

6. And speaking of that, what’s your latest book, and why is it awesome?

The Lady, The Tiger and the Girl Who Loved Death follows two women across generations: Sara, a circus master’s daughter seeking revenge, and her granddaughter Irenda, who becomes entangled in a web of state-sponsored illusions decades later. It’s a story about how grief and love echo across time, set in a world where the line between political spectacle and magical performance has completely dissolved. At its heart, it asks whether stories liberate us or trap us—and whether we can tell the difference. But what makes it truly awesome is that it’s also narrated by a godlike talking tiger who may or may not be trustworthy. The tiger represents something wild that we think we might tame—which becomes this perfect unreliable guide through a world where nothing is quite what it seems. It felt like the ideal narrator for a story about the power and danger of storytelling itself.

Thank you, Helen!

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin