[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.] Hi, my name is Tara Mikel Rana and I'm the author of the forthcoming epic fantasy trilogy Dawn of the Firebird.
I'm also a student at the University of Oxford, doing my, um, fill at the intersection of human rights and economic policy.
Outside of writing, I actually am the co-host of the On the Right Track podcast, where I love to interview bestselling authors and spill tea.
Outside of that, I study in traditional martial arts, and I fall down a historical rabbit holes that inspires much of my writing.
Fantasy is a veil that inspires me as a writer to explore different moral possibilities and moral spectrums that otherwise wouldn't exist in fiction.
And what I mean by that is that essentially, when I'm writing a fantasy world of constructing it from scratch, that means the characters,
the tradition, the cultures are all taking place in a land that's outside my present experience and what our ideologies and moral spectrum look like.
That means I can explore morally great characters that make terrible decisions,
or morally good characters that have a different moral spectrum than us,
and that's important for us to empathise and basically humanise other cultures, other people that we otherwise wouldn't have access to.
So there are two authors. One of them is still a bit contemporary, but he was definitely like very famous in the 80s and 90s.
So Orson Scott Card, who wrote Ender's Game, was my formative book.
It basically inspired the entire kind of idea and plot of Dawn of the Firebird, because it is also a military academy story.
It follows basically a young boy who's a military prodigy.
Um, and it sees his rise within a military school. And that was fascinating.
It was my first exposure to that idea of that academy setting trope that you
see in fiction now that is so beloved and popular and many contemporaries.
At the same time, it also confronted difficult questions of innovation, of weaponry, of genocide, because that was the arc of Endor.
Similarly, within my work Dawn of the Firebird, we follow Camilla, my main character, and her discovery going through a magical academy.
That military school being a prodigy, but also confronting very uncomfortable questions about war, justice and genocide.
Um, the second inspiration for me is Jane Austen.
I think for many female writers, she's a huge inspiration just because she was able to basically, in a woman's fiction,
bring the agency of a woman forward, um, and grapple with questions of identity, self being, agency and romance.
And so my book isn't romantic.
It still deals with the idea of love and how that is a huge formative experience for an individual, especially my main character.
Yes, I do think it's difficult to write fantasy without romance, and that's not coming from me individually.
I think it's difficult because there's pressures in the market about it.
But at the same time, epic fantasy has been a beloved subgenre for decades and decades, right?
Tolkien, C.S. Lewis are like the classic monsters of the Stranraer.
Also, science fiction I don't see as a separate genre. I think science fiction belongs to fantasy.
I see it as a subgenre of fantasy. So Ender's Game, though it's a sci fi to me, it's very much fantasy, fantastical.
And so there's always going to be room for non-romantic fantasy.
And Donna, the Firebird will eventually have romantic subplots, but it's never going to be a romantic.
And even now we see popular books like the Will of the many, like the Poppy War, Like You Became the Sun,
where romance is not at all central to the plot, but they are so beloved and popular in the current market.
They've gone viral, and I find that Dawn of the Firebird is coming out at a time that can put its
book alongside other contemporaries in kind of the military fantasy genre.
I disagree with that. Um, so I go off of the words of Ursula.
I also go off of the words of Ken Leo, who I got to interview for my podcast recently, and he's also such a beloved figure in the fantasy space.
Um, in short story space. They similarly believe that science fiction belongs under the as a subgenre under fantasy.
And I believe that because of a key reason, which is that I don't think fantasy is in the realm of the impossible where you imagine it.
I believe in so many elements that exist in fantasy, because even my book draws on Islamic law.
That is law that I believe. I don't see it as a myth. That's a law that I believe.
Similarly, people do bring and, uh, derive a lot of their fantasy and fiction from existing law.
And that existing law is stories that were passed down generation from generation to generation,
through written script to the Bible, through religious scriptures, through oral storytelling, in folk telling traditions.
Um, and so story is a way to immortalise something, to bring it from the imagination to the, to the realm of existence.
And so it is very much real, and I don't see it in the realm of impossibility.
On the other hand, for science fiction, I actually think they derive the same kind of thought process and knowledge production you see in fantasy
that is used in science fiction to a lot of that science that you read does not actually exist in science.
They might loosely use concepts, or they might be using real scientific concepts, but there's still a realm of imagination in there.
That's why so many beloved classics like George Orwell's a lot of that didn't exist in his time, but a lot of that exists now.
Fantasy I actually see it's the same thing. It grapples with difficult questions, really good fantasy does.
And a lot of that think those concepts you see in fantasy or sci fi are starting to happen in our world.
And so storytelling is not something that's abstract.
It brings it into the realm of existence. It deals with questions of human behaviour and human thought.
Some of the darkest parts of our history, and it touches on traditions that are really real.
And our actual belief systems that people like me do believe in.
So we can't just see it as a false. That's a false dichotomy. We must see it as intrinsically tied to each other.
Thank you. Yes.
So my favourite fantasy tourism of all time is sort of taken by my wing and then the Will of the many, which is by James Ellington.
I'm actually reading a early copy of the sequel to the Will of the many, called The strength of the film,
and it's even more amazing than the first book, and it has such an fantastical world, and it really the author just takes it to new heights.
So I strongly recommend both of those books and series, and I think people who are fans of the military fantasy subgenre or fans are like,
the idea of this book would love both of those books because they were huge inspirations for me.
So you mentioned before that Romania is dominating the markets.
And I love romantic. I do love my occasional romantic book.
Um, but I actually see epic fantasy making such a nice comeback, um, through the two books I just mentioned by my contemporaries.
Um, my book is getting published, which is an epic fantasy that's not really romantic.
And so what I see right now that's exciting about fantasy is you now start seeing kind of a bit of an equilibrium.
You have romantic fantasy that's getting it to your moment.
You see epic fantasy kind of having a resurgence because people are craving kind of that escapism,
that really densely constructed world, um, where they can just escape into it.
And I think people were craving that because sometimes some of those lower fantasy,
uh, that don't have like card based magic systems, people escape into it.
But it's a bit of a quicker read as well. I think people are starting to crave longer fantasy.
Um, and I hope you know, Donna, The Firebird is a book that they love, and the world is something that they bond with.
Um, and I'm really loving that trend at the moment. That's an excellent question.
Firstly, I think every author should have the mission and the, uh,
capability to write a story based on other cultures as long as it's done with sensitivity, research and nuance.
What that means is hiring sensitivity readers. What that means is making sure that you're critical of yourself.
You're decentring yourself, and you're open to basically rewriting.
Accepting that your first try probably won't be good, probably won't be the representation that the world needs.
It also means that you also make room for authors of those backgrounds to write their stories.
Perhaps you have a side character that's diverse, not just a main character.
It also means that you have to be well read.
You have to start researching other cultures, knowing that the Bible is not the only kind of religious tradition.
Um, and secondly, it means you should also read the books of other colleagues, um, that are from non-traditional backgrounds.
Just because an author is from a certain ethnic group, nationality or religious identity does not mean their book is that.
So my book, known as A Firebird, is not South Asian.
It's not in the Islamic period, but it is definitely a new culture or something that's made up.
It does draw on biblical, the Islamic version of biblical stories.
Um, to construct the world. You know, that is not my particular background.
I am Muslim, but I'm not Christian. I'm not. You know, you can't subscribe a book based on ethnicity.
The last example I will give is that this book takes place after Noah's flood.
What is the ethnicity of people after Noah's flood? We don't know.
Like, obviously there's certain research and academia behind it,
but we actually can't point to real life people and be like, that's your same identity.
So you should have the permission to explore these ages, these time periods, but you have to do with research and nuance and with an open mind.
And so I was able to write that time period kind of.
But I did it with a lot of research and looking at different religious interpretations.
All authors have to do is have an open mind, take criticism, and I think we'll have better fiction that way.