In today's podcast Julia Golding is in conversation with James Nicol, author of The Apprentice Witch series (Chickenhouse) and one of our tutors on the creative writing courses. What are your favourite witches in fairy tales and in novels? See if you agree with James' and Julia's picks. They go on to discuss the problem of the history of witches in our world, how women labelled as witches were marginalised, persecuted and sometimes killed. What should you do with that real-world inheritance when writing in your own fantasy world? Find out James' solution. They discuss the issue of black magic and evil. Some readers won't touch books with witches in, seeing them in this bracket. However, fantasy witches come from many more backgrounds. James and Julia discuss the rare occasions of getting banned from some shelves for tackling this subject. To conclude, they decide in which fantasy world it is best to be a witch.

Visit https://oxfordcentreforfantasy.org for more information on today's podcast. For a full transcript, visit https://podcast.oxfordcentreforfantasy.org