Meet The North East Author Taking The Fantasy World By Storm
From YA fiction and fantasy, to horror and romance, Northumberland's Laura Steven can do it all
Hailing from Berwick, Laura has had books on the brain for as long as she can remember. ‘I was always the bookish kid, an absolute Matilda, and I would go to the library every single weekend and check out the maximum number of books that you were able to, and have all of them read by Tuesday,’ she says. ‘I’d always written, and then I got to my teenage years and became a lot more self conscious, which is probably quite common in anyone who has always wanted to write. Suddenly, I was aware that this wasn’t how the cool kids were spending their time, making up stories about dragons.’
After briefly pursuing a degree in business, Laura then switched to journalism before landing a role as a writer at none other than Living North. It was here that Laura was able to re-discover and explore her love of writing. ‘Once I was away from the academic pressure and away from people telling me what I should and shouldn’t be reading, that’s when my love of reading for pleasure came back,’ she explains, and it didn’t take long for that to blossom into success. ‘I wrote my first book that year and that’s the one that got me a literary agent – it sold to HarperCollins within a year.’
After that initial success there has been no stopping Laura, who has gone on to write broadly, dipping into everything from comedy and YA fantasy to horror. ‘I read really broadly across lots of genres and don’t know many people that just stick to one, but as writers you often have this pressure to find your “personal brand” and stick to it,’ she says. ‘That never appealed to me. I like to keep things interesting for myself and if I’m getting bored writing, then the reader is going to be bored reading. I think you can tell with a lot of my books that it’s just been an act of pure passion.’
But although Laura’s work may jump between and blur the lines of genre, her strong voice is the common thread that strings them together. ‘I’ve always been very voice-driven and I always had quite a strong, identifiable writing voice,’ she explains. ‘So throughout my comedy, my horror and into my fantasy, I’ve got quite a recognisable style. I think that marries everything together and I’m never just writing a story. In The Society For Soulless Girls, I was writing about anger and the way we suppress it, and in Every Exquisite Thing I was writing about body image and beauty pressures for young women.’
With the fantasy genre experiencing its own renaissance (think Dune, House of The Dragon, The Rings of Power – we could go on), Laura shares her thoughts on what makes the genre so irresistible. ‘I think when the world feels very difficult as it has in the last four or five years, there’s something to be said about the escapism of fantasy,’ she offers. ‘You are being transported to somewhere where you have no worries. There’s high-stakes, a lot of danger, a lot of romance and it feels very exciting. For me personally I completely forget my real life when I’m reading it – and dragons are just cool.’
Looking ahead, Laura’s next three years are packed to the brim after landing an adult fantasy three-book deal with Penguin. As well as that, you can expect a stand alone fantasy novel, also with Penguin, coming in 2025. ‘The first book that I sold to Penguin was called Our Infinite Fates, and it’s a tragic love story that spans 1,000 years and is about a pair of soulmates who are doomed to kill each other in every reincarnation.’ We’re sold – hook, line and sinker!
