The announcement has just gone out from my publishers to the book trade and has been covered by the UK publishing industry magazine The Bookseller, so I can finally tell you something about this next (seventh!) book I’ve been working on for the past eighteen months or so. It’ll be published May 14 here in the UK (June 2 in North America), and it’s called Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now.

None of you will be surprised at the thrust of the book, because these are ideas I’ve been working with for over two decades now and, as well as featuring in my various other writings and teachings, we’ve had several conversations around them here at The Art of Enchantment over the past two or three years. So let me just share my publisher’s press release with you, and then I’ll give you a little more background on what the book is about. And, of course, the all-important preorder links, including one to a time-limited, beautiful, signed, limited indie edition at the same price as the standard hardback! The full cover reveal will come soon.

The most important thing for me to say to you all: the paid subscribers to this publication have been instrumental in helping me work through some of the ideas I was playing with around my longstanding and ongoing creation of ‘The Fairy-Tale Heroine’s Journey’, which we explored here through 2024 and which is outlined in much more detail in the book itself. Some of you, as I advised several months ago, will also find extracts from your comments on my posts quoted in the book – though always without being named, to protect your privacy, and sometimes in the form of a composite comment. And of course there’s a big thank you to you all in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section of the book. Although these are stories I’ve been working with for a very, very long time, I never hold fixed ideas about them and you’ve so often helped me to see them with fresh eyes. I hope you all know that I appreciate this community very deeply, and I hope that you’ll feel as invested in this book you helped birth as I am in you all, and in your ideas and insights and all the ways we can embrace transformation together. (Stick around; the next book adventures are in sight. And I’m going to value your input into them just as much as I’ve valued your contributions to Ripening.)

It’s early days but over the coming months, I’ll be letting you know about events I’ve lined up that are centred around the book. And next year, as publication approaches, you can expect some very deep and interactive diving into the nature and purpose of European fairy tales, those most original and increasingly indispensable women’s stories, here at The Art of Enchantment.

(Or read in The Bookseller, here.)

September Publishing is delighted to announce a major new book for 2026 from psychologist, mythologist and bestselling author Sharon Blackie. Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now is a ground-breaking work on the power and relevance of fairy tales, and their heroines.

World English Language rights (including audio) to this, Sharon Blackie’s seventh book, were acquired by Hannah MacDonald for the September imprint at Duckworth Books from Jane Graham Maw at the Graham Maw Christie Literary Agency. Ripening will be published in May 2026.

Blackie is author of six previous books, including word-of-mouth bestseller If Women Rose Rooted and the acclaimed Hagitude. Approximately 150,000 copies of the English Language edition of If Women Rose Rooted have been sold in print, e- or audiobooks since its initial publication nine years ago. Translation rights to Sharon’s books have been sold in Portuguese, French, Dutch, Chinese, Latvian, Russian and Spanish.

Hannah MacDonald says:

‘With her four previous non-fiction titles Sharon Blackie has inspired hundreds of thousands women with the wisdom and solace of our native landscapes, folklore and myth. But when I read the first draft of Ripening: Why Women Fairy Tales Now, I felt more exhilarated than ever before at the prospect of taking Sharon’s book to new readers and new generations. Her message, that the original fairy tales with their darkness, symbolism and humour guide women through difficult life-journeys in perilous times, meets this moment in our political history perfectly. Fairy tale heroines are not perfect – or pink – or purely pretty. They are resourceful, brave and savvy and engaged with the challenges and possibilities for transformation ahead. Women will be reading and passing to friends and gifting to goddaughters for decades to come.’

Sharon Blackie says:

‘Fairy tales are powerful because at the heart of every one of them is transformation. These old stories of the folk that have been handed down to us through so many generations show women what it might look like not just to survive, but to thrive – by moving forward through a challenging world with values shaped by relationship, respect and reciprocity. We need such guiding stories now more than ever. I’m always excited to work with Hannah, and I’m so proud of what we’ve achieved together with my books over the past decade. I’m looking forward to this next chapter, and to working alongside the fantastic Duckworth team too.’

In a world in which old certainties seem to be crumbling, many women feel insecure or lost. In Ripening, Sharon Blackie insists that fairy tales are precisely the stories we need for such times.

Long before they became bywords for people-pleasing princesses, these old stories – passed down to us through generations by our peasant ancestors – told us everything that women need to learn about the world. They might be set in difficult and dangerous times, but they insist that their heroines face the unfaceable and dig deep for previously unimagined inner resources. They teach us to be savvy, inspire us to grow in confidence, show us how to be bold and claim the future we dream of.

More than anything, fairy tales are soul-food. They show us how to take hold of our own personal narratives and transform them into stories that might begin with trauma, but end with empowerment. They offer us images of startling resonance and beauty, while showing us how to recognise and make use of the possibilities that rise to the surface when broken systems are cracked open.

When broken systems are cracked open. (See the last sentence of Ripening’s cover blurb above.) That’s the point from which Ripening begins. It isn’t focused on the breaking or the collapsing or how we got to the particular omnishambles of a mess we find ourselves in now – there’s more than enough doom-laden commentary in the world about all that – but on how we can home in on the possibilities that emerge from the cracks. I wholeheartedly believe in possibility. And in the transformations – painful, for sure, but brave and beautiful – that women go through in difficult times.

As you all will know, my work has been centred around fairy tales (as well as myth) – as a psychologist, as a mythologist/ folklorist and as a writer and teacher – for well over two decades. And increasingly, as I’ve been taking in the ever-escalating challenges of the world around us – the crumbling of so many of the institutions we once thought would nurture and protect us, the rapid falling away of social norms and traditions, the loss of any shared sense of purpose or meaning – and all that before we even begin to think of adding in war, famine, climate change and ecological devastation – all I could think about were fairy tales. The fairy-tale heroine whose story always begins with catastrophe, walking out of the door with nothing, stripped of everything that once defined her or held her, gritting her teeth and just putting one foot in front of the other with no idea of anything as organised as a journey ahead of her, just a determination to go on. Forging her own path, building her own community, using her imagination, instincts, values and courage to create a whole new life for herself.

It’s not surprising that I should think about fairy tales in such a context, because these stories from the oral tradition which have been handed down through generation after generation, once were told precisely to help us find our bearings and to guide us through heartbreaking times. They’re stories to live by, and we’ve never needed them more than we need them now. Fairy tales insist that we face the unfaceable and dig deep for previously unimagined inner resources. They breathe life into our hopes and dreams; they illuminate who we are – and who we might possibly someday become. And they show us how to live and how to express our individuality in an interconnected world, with values and moral codes shaped by relationship, respect and reciprocity – and always, always by gratitude for the surprising and ever-shapeshifting gift of life itself.

Fairy tales, as a subset of folk tales, are by definition the stories of the folk, and they were always designed to shed light on the issues that ordinary people face as we grow up and grow old. They’re free of the grandeur and expectations of myth, and of all-conquering frameworks like the Hero’s Journey. Our ancestors – the hard-working, long-suffering peasant women who told these stories to each other and passed them down the generations through the oral tradition – knew everything there was to know about adversity. Growing up and growing older today is hard, and the stakes are high – but it’s always been hard, and the stakes have always been high. And the universal ancestral wisdom that’s locked up in fairy tales shows us that although our individual ways of responding to life’s joys and vicissitudes might be unique, and although times change and the texture of our challenges might change too, the fundamental issues that women face are the same issues that we’ve always faced. How to leave home. How to navigate an encounter with the big bad wolf. How to reclaim the lost art of apprenticeship and put in the work that’s needed to reach our highest potential. How to recover the skin that was stolen from us. How to manage in times of war or famine. How to beat the Devil. How to cultivate the sheer bloodymindedness that’s necessary to survive the inevitable, relentless hazards of a woman’s life.

Ripening, then, speaks precisely to the times we live in: times that are less grounded and rooted than any other time in our history. Times in which we’ve become divorced from any deep sense of community, of lineage, of history, or nature. That’s why women need fairy tales now. Can we reclaim our rootedness through our traditional stories? I think so. And I look forward to exploring these ideas with you in the months ahead.

Please find preorder links for the UK and USA at this Linktree. Readers elsewhere: yes, it’s going to be available in your market! The data is just a little slower in feeding through to retailers in some countries; this is certainly the case in Australasia so please check back soon; the Linktree will be updated as soon as we have those links.

In the meantime, I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to the exclusive signed indie special edition, which will be available only from West End Lane Books here in the UK, at the same RRP as the standard hardback – and they will ship it worldwide. It’s going to be a thing of beauty, with sprayed edges and special finishes, and signed by me. It’ll only be available in limited quantities for a limited time, and unless you make it to a live event here in the UK, it’ll be the only way of getting signed books, so do get your preorders in now to stand a chance of bagging your copy!

Now comes the plea: as I’m sure many of you will know by now, preorders are really important for any book’s success in an ever-crowded market. Although May next year might seem like a long way off, and although of course I’ll be reminding you when I talk about the book in the months to come, if you’re able to show your support for my work (and acknowledge your much-valued participation in and contribution to it!) by preordering your copy of Ripening, I’d be hugely grateful.

Preorders tell both retailers and readers that they should pay attention to a book. Preorder numbers are a good early indicator of a book’s likely success, and this can lead to retailers increasing their initial orders for it, so ensuring that the book will be available on publication in physical stores. Online preorders are important for the same reasons; preorders on Amazon, for example, make it very much more likely that a book will show up in search results and recommendations.

If you’re more likely to order online, then it’s worth knowing that with most online retailers, including Amazon, you don't pay for preorders at the time of placing the order. You’ll only pay when the book is shipped, so if you're planning to buy the book at some point anyway, then preordering it early won't mean you’re charged early. And it will ensure that you don’t forget, and miss the buzz and conversations around its publication!

I’d be very grateful if you would forward this email to any friends, family and colleagues who you think would like Ripening and who might be able to show their support by preordering the book.

As always, I’m immensely grateful for your presence here, your support for my work and your enthusiasm for my books.