BFS Chair Shona Kinsella interviews Saara El-Arifi, the number one Sunday Times bestselling author of Faebound and The Ending Fire Trilogy on Thursday 20th June 2024, 7pm to 8pm (BST).

Saara El-Arifi (she/her): She has lived in many countries, had many jobs, and owned many more cats. After a decade of working in marketing and communications, she returned to academia to complete a master’s degree in African studies alongside her writing career. El-Arifi knew she was a storyteller from the moment she told her first lie. Over the years, she has perfected her tall tales into epic ones. She currently resides in London as a full-time procrastinator.

Books by Saara El-Arifi

Cleopatra (coming 2025): A reimagining of one of the world’s most famous women in Cleopatra, bringing to life the last Pharaoh of Egypt in a heart-wrenching and powerful new epic. After the death of her father, nineteen-year-old Cleopatra is thrust upon the throne, unaware of what the next twenty years would bring. Blessed by the Goddess Isis, Cleopatra’s reign is plagued by Roman intervention that even her deity cannot stop. She must navigate the Roman civil war, the wrath of the gods, but most of all the lure of love. Writing back to the millennia of propaganda and myth-making, El-Arifi weaves together a never seen before rendition of Cleopatra in this captivating new tale. With the magical spark of Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne and the feminist heart of Madeline Miller’s Circe, Cleopatra promises a spell-binding adventure in the land of ancient Egypt.

Faebound Trilogy: Divided by blood, imprisoned by fate, bound by desire. Welcome to the intoxicating world of the fae. Yeeran is a warrior in the elven army and has known nothing but violence her whole life. Her sister, Lettle, is trying to make a living as a diviner, seeking prophecies of a better future. When a fatal mistake leads to Yeeran’s exile from the Elven lands, they are both forced into the terrifying wilderness beyond their borders. There they encounter the impossible: the fae court. The fae haven’t been seen for a millennium. But now Yeeran and Lettle are thrust into their seductive world – torn between their loyalty to each other, their elven homeland, and their hearts …

The Ending Fire Trilogy (The Final Strife, The Battle Drum, The Ending Fire): Stolen from her noble crib as a child, Sylah was one of ‘the Sandstorm’: 12 Ember children raised by rebels to one day bring down the empire — until a massacre left her the lone survivor. Years later she spends her days numb from addiction, fighting (and winning) in the ring to fund her habit. But when her long-lost stepbrother returns, determined to fulfil the purpose they were trained for, Sylah is caught between her blood, and her loyalties. Forced to confront everything she has run from, and the truth of her past, can Sylah achieve the destiny she was trained for?

Buy Saara El-Arifi’s book here, find out more on her website, or follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

For queries regarding the event, please contact PS Livingstone: onlineevents@britishfantasysociety.org

For literary enquiries, blurbs, speaking engagements, rights or film queries, please reach out to Saara’s agent: juliet@mushens-entertainment.com

For publicity requests please reach out to: susanna.peden@harpercollins.co.uk

Shona Kinsella (she/her): Shona Kinsella is a multiple-award-nominated Scottish fantasy author. Her works include The Heart of Winter, The Vessel of KalaDene series, The Flame and the Flood, and non-fiction Outlander and the Real Jacobites: Scotland’s Fight for the Stuarts. She was the editor of the British Fantasy Society’s fiction publication BFS Horizons for four years and is now the Chair of the Society. She lives with her husband and 3 children on the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond.

Find out more about Shona on her website. Or you can follow her on Facebook and Bluesky. Buy her latest book, The Heart of Winter, here.