British-Sudanese-Ghanaian fantasy author Saara El-Arifi is a major voice in the speculative fiction space. Her debut novel, The Final Strife (2022) is an epic fantasy, drawing inspiration from African and Arabian mythology.  Her latest work, Faebound (2024) is a shift into the hot new genre of Romantasy, a hybrid of romance and fantasy that has exploded in visibility thanks to titles like Fourth Wing and A Court of Thorns and Roses. Faebound is a world of elves and fae centered on themes of love, sisterhood, and magic. It has been commercially successful and was said to have had a two-hour book-signing line on launch day. Faebound also won a British Book Award (aka The Nibbies) for the “Pageturner of the Year” category.

In a recent interview on the Nibbies Podcast, in conversation with Hafsah Faizal, El-Arifi candidly discussed her initial hesitations about the Romantasy label. She expressed concerns about being pigeonholed, particularly as a woman of color in a genre often dominated by specific narratives. What she shares speaks to a larger conversation about how genre classifications can empower and restrict authors, especially those from marginalized backgrounds.

El-Arifi’s comments feel especially relevant right now. For one, they raise questions about Romantasy, a booming category that still has people wondering whether it’s a trend or here to stay. It’s also exciting to see an African author stepping into this space. But more than that, her story brings up a long-standing issue: for African and diasporic writers, genre is not always just a helpful label. It can box writers in. But as El-Arifi reminds us, “genre is for the reader,” not the writer. For many writers, remembering that can be freeing.

Read the excerpted interview below and tell us what you think.  Does genre help or hurt your reading experience?

Hafsah Faizal: Faebound, I understand, was published as both Fantasy and Romantasy.

Saara El-Arifi: Yes. So it was really interesting because I was a bit reticent of the idea of kind of selling it as Romantasy, which obviously is quite a buzzword. But when I sold Faebound, the fourth wing hadn’t come out. Romantasy was a term that was bandied about, but not really used in the mainstream. There’s not a bookseller article that kind of comes out now that doesn’t have the word Romantasy in it. And when they said to me, we’re going to market this as Romantasy, I was hesitant because I had this feeling, and it still happens. There’s this wave of discussion around women and writing YA. And I think there’s this assumption that if you’re a female writer, you only write YA. And that’s happened to me multiple times. And I started thinking, is Romantasy the new thing? If you’re a female writer, do you only write Romantasy if you were right within that genre? And that was my feeling of it. And I was like, I don’t want to just become labeled as one thing. And I completely don’t feel that way at all anymore. I think Romantasy is a sub genre that is growing fantasy in a way that no one other sub genre really has, not since kind of the days of Twilight and Hunger Games. I’m just seeing this huge resurgence of sales and I’m so excited because it has a ripple effect on the whole genre here. Some epic fantasy writers, which I do count myself still as an epic fantasy writer, a lot of them are, I’d say a choice few, are, you know, oh no, Romantasy is taking over and there’s no space for me at the table. It’s kind of the idea that diversity is also taking over. And I’m like, absolutely not. You know, this is a good thing for all of us. I think it’s an amazing thing. And also genre is nothing to do with the author really. It’s for the reader. It’s the way that we categorize and it’s a way to market. And once you accept that and once you realize actually it’s your editors and your marketing team who can guide you in that sense. I think if you are overburdened by your audience when you’re writing it, if you’re thinking I’m writing for Romantasy readers, you can sometimes not write what you want to write. And I think I was very lucky that I didn’t really think about it and I could write what I wanted to write.