Finbar Hawkins
About Author
Finbar Hawkins's novel Ghost weaves ancient tales of haunting and evil with an eerie contemporary story. He tells ReadingZone what inspired the story. His debut novel, Witch, was shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award and nominated for the 2022 Carnegie medal (Zephyr).
Hawkins is a graduate of the Bath Spa MA in Writing for Young People. He grew up in Blackheath, London and now lives in Wiltshire with his family, in a landscape steeped in myth and legend. He is a creative director at Aardman Animations, where he makes fun interactive things for children of all ages.
finbarhawkins.com Twitter/Instagram: @finbar_hawkins
Interview
November 2025
Finbar Hawkins explores the supernatural in his eerie new novel, Ghost (Zephyr)
Featuring three young women from across time, Finbar Hawkins' novel, Ghost, explores women and power, imagination and the nature of ghosts themselves. ReadingZone spoke with Finbar to find out how myths and legends help inspire his writing, the true story that he writes about in Ghost, and the discussions he hopes it will encourage.
You can also find Finbar's Creative Challenge to students, below; use his writing tips to create an atmospheric setting in your own story.
Review: "Ghost is a beautifully written story. It's lyrical in tone and its language conjures spirits and magic throughout."
Read a Chapter from Ghost
Q&A with Finbar Hawkins, introducing Ghost
"Myths, legends and folklore are such an important of my reading life and always have been.
These stories have such power, and emanate through time."
1. Can you tell us a little about yourself, your loves and loathings, and what brought you into writing for young people?
I live in Wiltshire, which, while always spectacular, is looking particularly on point given the autumn trees full of rich and changing colours. My dog walks at the moment are a constant photo fest of beautiful trees and the wonderful crisp sunlight at this time of year. And that's absolutely one of my loves - walking the land where we live, whatever the weather.
Other loves: my wife, who makes me laugh every day; my children and parents, reading, writing, cooking, playing computer games and watching films. Loathings - well, I don't like to expend too much energy on such things. But certainly I like to avoid those who don't care about others and the planet, the land that sustains us.
2. What kinds of stories do you enjoy writing, and what happens in your new book, Ghost? Do you feel its themes are linked to either of your earlier books, Witch and Stone?
I enjoy writing all types of stories and in different media, whether prose, scriptwriting or for computer games. For my novels, I'm always drawn to what I enjoyed reading when I was growing up - so stories set in different periods of history, particularly the ancient past. I'm also a big fantasy fan, so elements of that come into my writing, blending with folklore, myth and the supernatural, again all subjects that I couldn't get enough of growing up, and still can't!
Ghost is about three young women in three different times - Aine, a fierce Celtic warrior who's enslaved by Roman invaders; Sarah, a healer and ‘white witch' who is evicted from her home and finds a hideout in the local woods; and present day Marie, who is recovering from a burnout and has dropped out of college - she's visiting her aunt in the country, when she stumbles across a local ghost story about a place called 'Sally in the Wood'. The story tells how the three of them connect with each other across time, and how they must confront a dark presence that haunts the woods.
Certainly there are links to my previous books, WITCH and STONE, with young people overcoming loss and confronting challenges. I think all my writing explores navigating the unknown and what it means to be human in the face of something that is not, that is difficult to quantify. I'm fascinated by how we don't really understand the universe at all, and I find this rich ground to explore as an author.
3. Ghost features three young women through the ages. Why did you decide to structure the novel like this, with three stories that weave together through time?
My way in to this structure, centring on Aine, Sarah and Marie, came from my take on what a ghost might be. What if spirits are actually human beings, but in different aspects of time and space? What if the doors between those times opened?
In my research, I discovered that the blackbird has long been considered a creature that could guide and open doors between worlds. So then I was away, I knew that these three young women would connect, helped by a blackbird and that the woods were essentially the same doorway for each of them in their different times.
4. What draws you to writing about the ancient past? Are there any local stories or legends that inspired this new story about an ancient, evil presence in the woods?
I think I'm instinctively drawn to the past, as it sparks my imagination in the same way it did when I was a child. I love that we know so little about the ancient past. We have things we dig up, and we can make assumptions, but there is so much about belief and culture and how people thought that we can only put a spin on. For me this is fertile ground for stories, that feeling of 'what if this person felt this way . . . ?'
When I was first told about Sally in the Wood, I was on a canal trip with my family on a bright May day. I knew that there was something pulling me in. I was told a ghost story - you'll find it in the acknowledgements to Ghost. When, like Marie in my story, I started to find out about the area by searching the web, I realised that somewhere very close to where I've lived for years, has a reputation for being an extremely haunted stretch of road. There are many stories about the area - which I'll leave your readers to explore for themselves
5. In writing about these myths, you create a story that reads like a myth. Have myths played a large part in your own reading or landscapes that you travel in, and what draws you to revisiting myths in your writing?
Myths, legends and folklore are such an important of my reading life and always have been. These stories have such power, and emanate through time. I talk about this in the acknowledgements in GHOST too, the book I grew up with and still have, called The Reader's Digest to Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain. As a child, I spent many hours immersed in this book, which I think carries totemistic qualities, like a grimoire sitting on my shelf.
It is testament to our supernatural isles, showing that wherever you travel across Great Britain you will find such stories. All I can say, is that I am drawn to them, I can't define why, as they are such an integral part of my subconscious as a reader and a writer. I will always write about these things. I find it a calling in a way, and an honour to walk with these stories and celebrate them.
You say GHOST reads like a myth and that's the magick I was after weaving into my writing, to cast a spell on the reader. All of life is intertwined with myth and legend.
6. Settings take on a character of their own in your stories. How do you do this, and do you like to draw on settings you know for your stories, reinventing them for your writing? How would you encourage young writers to use a place they know to create an atmospheric setting?
Well, as simply as I can encapsulate anything about writing, which is really something you need to do and feel, it is rather difficult to define, and in a way shouldn't be. It should just be done. But - the 'how' is as easy as just walking out in nature, in all seasons. Look, listen, touch and smell, have all your senses alive to what you're experiencing.
Yes, I absolutely like to use settings that I know - all of my books have settings that I have visited. Witch is set in the Mendip area near Wells, with that incredible vista out over the Chew Valley towards Glastonbury. Stone is set in Oxfordshire and is one of the most magickally charged landscapes in the world, where the ancient White Horse of Uffington is located. Walk there and you'll feel it. Ghost is set in and around the woods near Bradford-upon-Avon and Box, where Romans once tunnelled for the stone that built much of early Bath. These are all places I've walked for years, at different times.
As far as encouraging young writers, I would do as I have done: go to these places and use your senses - put your phone on silent and then use it to record videos, to take pictures, as I do for reference for later. Take in everything. Bring a notebook and sit a while, listen and free write, note anything that comes to mind. And let your mind wander, allow your imagination to soak up the setting. Use these notes later when you're putting your character in a scene - think about what they see, hear, feel and smell, because all of these senses empower your setting and help to place your audience in that place. You are conjuring something, and when a reader's brain reads a sensory word, they will also feel it.
7. As in Ghost, your earlier novel Witch featured powerful women with magical abilities. Why do you enjoy exploring these powerful sisterhoods through your writing, and what do you hope the reader will take from them?
For me it's a celebration of the female spirit, how it connects with creation, with the Earth. All of the women in my life have magickal abilities, so it's natural for me to want to sing out about this. There has been too much subjugation of women in our society, and it clearly still goes on across the world, in all cultures. I frankly want to turn this on its head in my writing, to show how incredible and attuned the female spirit is to the ineffable, to the supernatural, to the wonderful.
Similarly to being drawn to myth and legend, I will always write about women, the difficulties they overcome, the emotions they draw upon, and ultimately how incredibly strong they are. My next book is a sequel to Witch and will continue the story of the sisters, Evey and Dill, this time through Dill's voice, now a teenager in the strange and wild country of Ireland in the 1640s.
8. What other kinds of discussions would you like Ghost to inspire among your readers?
I guess the heart of it for me, is the question that I've pondered ever since I first read about ghosts and spirits and other worlds or dimensions. What are ghosts? Are they simply the power of our imagination? Why do so many people have ghost stories, even perhaps when they don't believe in them?
I would like my readers to think about what this means. Do we need ghost stories to help us understand something about life? My book draws on a lot of the ghost stories that were told to me, and are still being told to me. Do you know a ghost story, or perhaps something that has happened to somebody else? What do you feel about this story?
I think ghost stories go right to the root of us as humans. They make us shiver and question reality. And if my writing can ignite that, then my conjuring has done its job ;->
9. Where and when do you do your best writing, and how do you squeeze writing hours into your day? What are you writing currently?
I find that writing goes in different stages, depending on where I am in the evolution of the book. When I've got my teeth into a story and I'm working through successive drafts then I need to write every day, so that my subconscious keeps turning things over. Often it won't be until later drafts that I see connections between things - some of this is craft and some of it is happenstance, but if I wasn't sitting down every day to write I wouldn't engender them.
When I'm at home, I work in my study, which is starting to collapse inwards from the amount of books, so it's time for a clean out soon! I often come to Cornwall for writing retreat for a few days - it's where I am now in fact - and I find it very harmonious for the writing to see, hear and walk beside the sea. I'm currently starting to immerse myself in historical research, as well as mulling over broad plotlines, certain scenes for the sequel to WITCH. It's very early days, but exciting to begin.
10. Landscapes and settings form an important part of your stories; what are your favourite kinds of landscapes to escape into to relax? What else comes at the top of your 'things to do' to relax list?
North Cornwall is where I come a lot both with my family to relax and also to write. All my books have salt air imprinted upon their pages. And Wiltshire is where I live, and I find its landscape endlessly inspiring for story, as well as being meditative, somewhere I can walk and let stories come to me. WITCH came from walking the hills near my home. STONE draws heavily on the same area, as well as one of my favourite walks to the Uffington White Horse in Oxfordshire.
Other things I like to do to relax - well, reading and drawing I very much enjoy. I was recently given a new iPad Pro and it's a marvellous object, so I'm enjoying learning new techniques in Procreate, a drawing application I use. I like to cook, and while I'm not an instinctive, creative cook, I like discovering and trying different recipes while listening to music. I play computer games - I've always been a Nintendo nut, and have a Steam deck, so I keep up on their indie game market. I find games endlessly fascinating as a resource for writing too.
Watch Finbar Hawkins introduce his earlier novel, Stone (Zephyr, 2022)
Finbar Hawkins' new novel, Stone, draws on ancient stories of witchcraft and magic, while delivering a contemporary story about fathers and sons, bereavement and first love. Stone carries echoes of his debut novel, Witch (Zephyr), which was nominated for the 2022 Carnegie medal. In this Q&A, Finbar tells us about the childhood reading that inspires him as a writer, drawing on ancient myths and exploring friends and family through his writing. Find out more in ReadingZone's earlier Q&A with Finbar Hawkins.
Ghost: A chilling story of the supernatural from the author of Witch
Stone
Witch
