Sorcery, Shapeshifting and Female Power in Our Islands’ Oldest Story with Elizabeth Sulis Kim and Brigid Lowe

Pannel with two authors and conversation

TALK ONE:

Shapeshifting Witches

Elizabeth Sulis Kim takes us on a whirlwind tour of our troubling relationship with animals and our animal nature, drawing on her research from her narrative non-fiction debut, The Book of Beasts: Reclaiming Animal Wisdom. We will travel from prehistoric caves to the metropolises of the Ancient World to medieval times and on to the early modern witch trials, addressing how the condemnation of alleged ‘witches’ has coincided with the demonisation of the natural world, including other animals and the beastly side of ourselves.

Witch trial documents and witch-finding manuals often stress the bestial nature of the witch, condemning people who collude with animal familiars and beastly devils, convene in wild places or even appear to metamorphose into other animals. Yet throughout time we also find alternative stories that seem to go against the grain, about collaboration with animals and cultures who hold certain animals as sacred.

Finally we will circle back to the present day, looking at how the modern reclamation of the word ‘witch’ has birthed more hopeful narratives about how we might coexist with other beings, and consider the productive role of the shapeshifting identity for conjuring a more hopeful future for humans and other beasts.

Bio: Elizabeth Sulis Kim is an Edinburgh-based writer originally from the rural West Country. She is the author of The Book of Beasts: Reclaiming Animal Wisdom (Chatto & Windus), a Caught by the River book of the month, and The Art of Folklore (Frances Lincoln/Quarto), forthcoming in early 2027. Her writing has appeared in places such as BBC Culture, Mslexia, Hellebore, Fiddler's Green, Litro, The Guardian, The Independent, Refinery29, and the LA Review of Books. She is the founding editor of Cunning Folk, the popular independent magazine about magic, mythology, folklore and the occult, and Spiritus Mundi, an anthology of occult writing.

TALK TWO

Women Who Wield the Wild: Nature, Magic and Female Power in the Mabinogi

In The Bloody Branch, Dr Brigid Lowe reimagines the women of the Mabinogi, the oldest prose stories in British literature. Among them is Arianrhod, the original Celtic sorceress. Shapeshifting lies at the heart of this ancient British tradition, in which women’s special and intimate relationship with the living land becomes a source not merely of solace or healing, but of vengeance, rebellion and power.

These stories came to Brigid through a woman who was herself one of the last inheritors of an ancient female tradition: women who held a vital place within their communities as keepers of story, wisdom and magic. Brigid explores what these tales reveal about female power through nature, and how their dangerous, transformative women speak to the modern reclamation of identities once feared, suppressed or condemned.

Bio

Dr Brigid Lowe is a Welsh writer of Irish Traveller heritage. She grew up in a remote, Welsh-speaking community on the island of Ynys Môn, surrounded by oral Celtic lore drawn from her local and family traditions. She went on to study and teach literature and Celtic tradition at the University of Wales, Oxford and Cambridge. Her first novel, The Bloody Branch, is a feminist eco-gothic reimagining of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi; her latest book, Shiver: The Lessons of the Lochs, explores wild water, recovery and the natural and folk histories of Scotland. She has written for The Times, The Scotsman, Folding Rock, Cunning Folk, The Simple Things, Outdoor Swimmer and many scholarly journals.

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