Marisa Linton's award-winning YA debut, The Binding Spell
About Author
Find out what inspired Marisa Linton's supernatural YA debut, The Binding Spell, winner of The Times / Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition.
Before she became a YA author, Marisa Linton wrote about history and taught history at Kingston University, specialising in witchcraft and magical beliefs. She is also a historical adviser for television and film. She now writes fantasy for young adults that draws on her love for ancient Celtic Britain, folklore and fascination with magic and the supernatural. Marisa grew up in Barnes, London, and now lives in Brighton.
You can follow Marisa @mlinton.bsky.social
Interview
May 2025
Marisa Linton introduces her award-winning YA debut, The Binding Spell (Chicken House)
Maria Linton, a professor of history, has written several books on history, but what she really wanted was to write fiction. Winning The Times / Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition with her debut book for teenagers, The Binding Spell, has, she says, enabled her to do so.
The Binding Spell has now been published by Chicken House and is available to readers aged 14+. ReadingZone spoke with Maria to find out more about her debut novel, a sinister and gripping mystery involving the ancient past, magic and witchcraft, and how her background in historical research helped her to write it. Read a Chapter from The Binding Spell.
Review: "A dark, enchanting YA novel that weaves witchcraft, family secrets, and ancient superstition into a compelling story."
Q&A with Marisa Linton: Drawing on the past to create a modern mystery story
"The book draws on folklore, and tales of druids and witches, but it's grounded in the present day."
1. Can you tell us a little about yourself, your career to date and how you got into writing for young people? What has kept you going with your writing?
As a professor of history, I've written multiple history books. But I adored fantasy fiction as a kid, and that love has never left me. Over the years my desire to tell a story that had haunted my imagination grew more insistent till I just had to write it down.
The Binding Spell began as a version of that story that I wrote for my daughters when they were small. When I finished it, I put it aside, thinking it unpublishable. But something kept drawing me back. Several years ago, I took it up again. By that time my kids had grown - and so the book's characters did, too. They became very twenty-first century teenagers, moving through a world that had grown very dark, tense and dangerous.
2. How life-changing has winning The Times / Chicken House Children's Fiction Prize for The Binding Spell been? What are your plans now for your writing?
Winning The Times / Chicken House Children's Fiction Prize in 2023 was the validation that I'd created a world that other people would enjoy - it was the most incredible feeling for me to know I'd done that. Winning means I can now do the thing I always secretly wanted - write publishable fiction and find readers. Winning gave me a new writing career and that means so much to me.
3. What happens in The Binding Spell, and why did you choose this title?
17-year-old Morgan and her siblings reluctantly go to live in a remote village where their dad is carrying out an archaeological dig. When the dad begins to uncover mysterious Celtic artefacts that should have stayed hidden, Morgan starts to realise that this is bad - very bad. She suspects that the mysterious guy she's drawn to is somehow involved in the mystery, but she can't work out how.
The book draws on folklore, and tales of druids and witches, but it's grounded in the present day, and the lead characters are dealing with rural poverty, early bereavement, parental depression, and the responsibilities of being a young carer - along with a strange new hidden world of magic.
The title The Binding Spell relates to the intense romance that's at the heart of the story, but it's all quite dark, and the question of who you can trust is very much to the fore.
4. What inspired this story of witchcraft, mythical beings and the supernatural? Have any other writers / novels helped inspire your writing?
I loved classic fantasy writers as a kid, people like J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Ursula Le Guin and Alan Garner. And the folklore, legends and fairytales that inspired those stories. The Binding Spell has changed a lot in the telling though, because I wanted to ground it in a contemporary world that readers now can recognise and relate to.
5. The Binding Spell explores witchcraft through Morgan's adventures. How have you used magic to represent feminine power through the story?
As a historian who's researched and taught about belief in magic and witches, I'm fascinated by the parallels between historical witches and modern ones - above all, magic as power for the powerless. The 'witch' is being reclaimed as a figure of empowerment, a symbol of harmony with the natural world, and of resistance to patriarchy, big business and exploitation - a resistance centred on women's right to autonomy over their own minds, bodies, creativity and imagination.
It's fascinating and inspiring for me, to see how a new generation is relating to that, and how people are reappropriating the traditions of witchcraft to meet the demands of the modern world.
6. The Binding Spell is set in the ancient village of Weir Hinny and Pouka Hill - did a real place help inspire this setting, and the legends attached to them?
Weir Hinny itself is fictional, but it's set in a real location, on the border between England and Wales, not far from Hay-on-Wye, home of book culture, and a place of many ancient legends. Even now it's quite a rural and remote part of England.
Weir Hinny is an archetype of the kind of villages of traditional black-and-white houses that are a big feature of the local landscape. Pouka Hill is also fictional, but it draws on many prehistoric sites that I know, including places in Anglesey, Wiltshire, Herefordshire and Jersey.
7. There are some fabulous mythical and supernatural beings in The Binding Spell. What was it like bringing them to life in your writing, and which is your favourite?
I loved creating the poukas - spirit animals who exist in hiding, half-forgotten relics of an older time and place. So they have to be my favourites. The 'creepers' came out of everything I find most scary. The kind of thing that you might find hiding among the dust and old shoes under your bed, who comes out and attacks you. The ghost stories of M.R. James were a big inspiration for them.
8. How do you build the tension and darkness through the novel, what are your writer's tips for doing so?
Step by step, building things up so that the character - and the reader - develop a growing sense of unease, an idea that something may not be right. It's also about confounding expectations, so that things don't happen at the moment you expect they will. I tried to use the kind of techniques Alfred Hitchcock pioneered in his films, building up an atmosphere of anticipation, then lulling readers back into a state of security so they breathe again, before hitting them with a blow from an angle they didn't expect. It's all about misdirecting the viewer/reader.
9. There are openings left at the end of the novel for a sequel - are you planning to write one? Can you give us a glimpse of what will happen, if so?
The story is far from over. I have two sequels in mind and would love the opportunity to share the further adventures of my characters. Johnny, Morgan's wild unruly twin, has been a bit in the shadow of his sister during the first book, but in the sequel he comes into his own. The question of who Caelen is, and where his loyalties lie, is a major driver of the ongoing story, while Morgan does something utterly foolhardy and reckless and has to deal with the consequences.
They will find that the dangers facing them are far from resolved. We see the return of old villains, and the emergence of new ones. All the stakes are raised, and the ending far from certain.
10. Are there places you go to help drive ideas for your novel? Does it help to write in places like these, or do you need a desk and laptop? And what kinds of things do you enjoy doing away from your desk?
I really enjoy visiting settings that I can reimagine for my story - old woods, lakes and rivers, monoliths and stone circles - part of the old landscape of the British Isles, all around us, though half hidden under the press and buzz of modern life. But none of those places is very conducive to the act of writing. So I scribble stuff in notebooks as I think of it, just long enough to remember when I'm back writing.
Most of my actual writing is done at the kitchen table, with no view, and in the very urban setting of my home. I often get my best ideas in the morning, when I'm still half drowsy. It's a state of mind that helps unleash my creative imagination.
Other things I like doing - socialising with my friends, being with the people I care about and just hanging out and laughing with them. Because writing itself is such a strange, solitary business, you need time out when are just having fun, just being.
School visits: Are you planning to offer school events? What is included in your events, if so, and how can schools go about contacting you to arrange a visit?
Absolutely, I have a couple of school visits booked already, and hopefully more to come now the book is out in the world.
- I can talk about the inspirations for my own writing, about folklore, witches and rewriting classical fantasy for the modern world.
- I can also talk about creative writing more broadly, advising audiences on finding your voice as a writer, and how to go about crafting fantasy and romantasy.
- I can also talk about writing history and historical fiction, and also my experiences working as a historical consultant for TV.
Contact details: At the moment the best way to contact me for school visits is through my email which is: [email protected]. However, I am in the process of setting up my own website which should be available by late June 2025. From then on it will be easiest to contact me via the website.
The Binding Spell: an atmospheric contemporary fantasy
