Saara El-Arifi is a No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of fantasy and historical fiction who, after a decade in marketing and communications, returned to academia to complete a master’s degree in African studies specialising in Cleopatra’s myth and her impact on Black women.

Her new novel, Cleopatra, published in February by Ballantine Books in the US and Borough Press in the UK, is the result of a sweeping historical epic that gives the Queen of the Nile back her own story, told in her own voice, on her own terms. The book has been met with extraordinary praise, with R.F. Kuang calling it El-Arifi’s masterpiece and Samantha Shannon describing it as an achievement that liberates Cleopatra from the judgement of men.

To mark the release, El-Arifi embarked on a run of events that brought some of the sharpest minds in contemporary women’s fiction into conversation with her work. On 23 February, she was at the Strand Book Store’s Rare Book Room in New York, in conversation with none other than Chloe Gong, whose own Coldwire had just dropped, for a release event that must have felt like a meeting of two writers at the very top of their game. Then on 3 March, she crossed the Atlantic for HOME in Manchester, joining Sunday Times bestselling author Rosie Hewlett, whose novel Sweetbitter Song was published the same week. The two discussed their new books, the enduring pull of mythology and historical retellings, and why these stories feel more urgent now than ever. The evening was hosted by award-winning writer and journalist Shahed Ezaydi.

Images From Saara El-Arifi’s Instagram Page: