Please read on for an exclusive 25% discount preorder offer for Ripening, and for Ripening events in May and June. Also: an exciting new musical project around my book Foxfire, Wolfskin. This email is likely to be cut short by your email provider – so do click on the title to read the full thing in your browser.

The summer side of the year has arrived with a bang here in the far north of England and, as ever, I’m conflicted about it. It’s hard not to love the sudden green flash of leaves bursting their buds seemingly overnight, the copious wild garlic down by the river, the jackdaws jealousy guarding new nests inside the hollow tree down by the river, the always-longed-for annual return of the cuckoo. But … as I write, we’re not even into May yet and darkness has already fled from my life. Even at 4.15 am, when I stagger outside to supervise the dogs’ morning pee, the skies are light enough that the stars are no longer visible, and that’ll be it now till the end of August/ early September. No matter gow old I grow, I never get used to it. Though the tawny owls are still up for their dawn hooting competitions, so that’s something.

And it’s going to be a busy old summer, too. On May 14th, in a couple of weeks, Ripening will finally be out in the world (except in North America, where the publication date is June 2) and I’ll be on the road doing a small number of carefully chosen events, which are listed again below in case any of you would like to come along and say hi. (And there’s much more to come in the North and in Scotland in the autumn.)

If you haven’t already preordered your copy yet, there’s an excellent 25% discount newly available for orders placed through Waterstones – see below for the discount code. Preorders really matter for the success of a book, not least because they draw bookshops’ attention to it and increase the chances they’ll stock it, so if you’re planning to buy it anyway, please do think about ordering in advance so it pops through your letterbox/ into your Kindle/ on your audiobook app as soon as it’s out there in the world. If you click on the button below you can see the best preorder options all together in a Linktree. You’ll see there that there’s also an excellent preorder offer from my local bookshop, Westwood Books in Sedbergh, which comes with an absolutely gorgeous limited edition tote bag (while stocks last, which won’t be long!) – and they’ll also ship overseas.

There are lots of different themes running through Ripening, but one of them is a reminder that fairy-tale heroines in the oral traditions of Europe were far from being the passive princesses of old Disney movies and carefully crafted literary creations. And so below I’ve listed five of my favourite fairy tales in which the heroine saves the day. You’ll find me writing about all of these – and very many more – in the book. Oh, and if you’d like to read an early interview with me about it all in The Psychologist (the magazine of my former professional body, the British Psychological Society) you can find it here. There’s also a short radio interview with Sara Cox for the BBC Radio 2 Book Club, which you can listen to here.

In the meantime, as ever, I’m wishing you all the blessings of whichever season you find yourself in, right now.

‘Tatterhood’ (Norwegian). A queen gives birth to two daughters; while one is ‘fair and sweet’, the other springs fresh out of the womb fully formed, brandishing a wooden spoon and riding a goat. The lively, fearless Tatterhood singlehandedly drives off a tribe of marauding trolls and saves everyone in the palace from certain death. She follows this feat by embarking on a sea voyage to save her younger sister, whose head was chopped off by a witch during the attack and then replaced with a calf’s head. She battles the trolls and their witch groupies for a second time and successfully regains her sister’s severed head.

‘Vasilisa the Beautiful’ (Slavic). Vasilisa’s wicked stepmother sends her off to the hut of the fearsome Baba Yaga to bring back fire, in the hope that the witch will kill her. With the help of a magic doll given to her by her dead mother, Vasilisa manages to outwit Baba Yaga while doing everything she’s asked to do. She leaves carrying the fire she came for in a magic lantern, which promptly kills her wicked stepmother and stepsisters by setting them alight.

‘The Frog Prince’ (German). A princess loses her ball in a well, and a talking frog recovers it for her on condition that she take him back to the palace with her and allows him to eat from her plate and sleep in her bed. Although she promised she would, the princess runs away once she has her ball back, but when the frog turns up at the door that evening, her father forces her to keep her promise. Between the insistence of her father and the frog that she does exactly what they want her to, the princess loses her temper, picks up the frog, and smashes it against a wall. At which point, the frog turns into a handsome prince, who she subsequently marries.

‘The Wild Swans’ (Danish). Elisa rescues her eleven brothers from a wicked stepmother’s curse. To break the spell that turns them into swans by day, Elisa has to remain silent and painfully knit shirts from stinging nettles that she’s picked with her bare hands. She narrowly survives being burned at the stake as a witch, and the shirts restore her brothers to human form.

‘Mr. Fox’ (English). Lady Mary is about to be married to a fine gentleman called Mr Fox, but all her instincts tell her something is wrong about him – especially when he refuses to invite her to the castle that she’s due to occupy with him someday soon. She follows him there secretly, and cleverly exposes his murderous history and the hidden chamber in which he keeps the bodies of the young women he’s killed. At the end of the story, I’m delighted to say that she remains happily unmarried.

If there are any UK readers who haven’t preordered their copy of Ripening yet, here’s your chance to take advantage of another exclusive new preorder offer, from Waterstones. The offer gives you 25% off the RRP, using the code Ripening26. Please note that the offer is available only on preorders i.e. for orders placed before publication day on May 14.

Order your discounted copy here.

May 12, 7pm. An Evening of Fairy Tales and Folklore with Dr Sharon Blackie. Seed Talk, Cecil Sharp House, London. Tickets here.

May 19, 6.30pm. Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales now. Topping, Bath. Tickets here.

May 21, 1–4pm. Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales now. Event via Alternatives at Glastonbury Town Hall. Tickets here.

May 22, 6.30pm. Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales now. Ashburton Arts Centre, via Craftmongers. Tickets here.

June 13 – 14, 11.30am. Keynote at the Spiritual Ecology Festival 2026, St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, London. Information and tickets here.

June 25 – 28. Talk at The Realisation Festival, St Giles House, Dorset. Information and bookings here.

I’m absolutely thrilled to be able to tell you that Anna, Charl and Lydia of the brilliant English folk band Wise Woman are planning a wonderful musical incarnation of my 2019 collection of reimagined fairy tales, Foxfire, Wolfskin and Other Stories of Shapeshifting Women.

Composed by Wise Woman, and performed by the trio and a collection of brilliant guest musicians, the album will combine original songs, spoken word and soundscape to conjure the book’s mythical retellings of female transformation, regeneration and wildness from across Europe:

... the wolf woman who has lost her skin

... the mighty bird princess who roams the mountainside

... the fox with a surprising secret

Listen to this amazing video clip of what they’re up to – if those voices don’t send shivers down your spine, I don’t know what will! Those of you who loved my ‘Wolfskin’ story – about a wolf woman whose skin was stolen by a man – with consequences for the man – at the start of Foxfire, Wolfskin will be sure to love this. They’ve just launched a Crowdfunder appeal to fund it, and if you can help we’d all be grateful for your support to fund recording, mixing and mastering Foxfire, in preparation for release in early 2027. Anna, Charl and Lydia hope this album is just the first unfolding of a larger vision: a live performance combining the album, storytelling and artwork into a magical concert experience. But for now, it all begins in the studio …

I was delighted to receive this beautiful object from another English folk singer/ songwriter whose work I’ve loved for a long time: Emily Portman. I recently shared Emily’s gorgeous ‘Fox’s Song’, which was inspired by the story of the shapeshifting foxwoman in my book Wise Women. Emily was kind enough to send me a copy of her forthcoming CD, which contains the song – but I wasn’t expecting to find the CD inside this gorgeous book, with beautiful imagery, the lyrics of all the songs, and with Emily’s writing about each of them. You can order this gorgeous CD book here – which also includes a full digital download of all songs.

Description: ‘Dominion of Spells invites listeners into a mythic realm – guided by fairy queens, selkies, and owl goddesses – where struggle becomes transformation and wonder is found through creativity and song. Renowned for her luminous songwriting and distinctive voice in contemporary folk, Portman steps into bold new territory with an album that charts a heroine’s midlife journey through the dark woods in search of wonder.’

It was an honour to be asked to write the Foreword for this anthology, which invites us to reconsider the shape of our lives and our approach to ageing, and which accompanies a major new exhibition from the Wellcome Collection. There’s lots of good stuff in it, including work by the inimitable Paula Rego. If you happen to be in London, it’s running until October. Find out more here. And you can order the anthology from the usual online suspects.