Former actor and creative writing graduate Nydia Hetherington talks to us about her latest novel 'Sycorax' which reimagines the story of Shakespeare's most powerful witch.
Nydia Hetherington is from Leeds - although born on Merseyside and spending the first few years of life on the Isle of Man - Nydia moved to London in her early twenties to embark on an acting career. Later she moved to Paris where she created her own theatre company. When she returned to London a decade later, she completed a creative writing degree at Birkbeck, graduating with first class honours.
Nydia's first novel A Girl Made of Air was published by Quercus in 2020 and will be familiar to many Suffolk readers. Nydia's latest title Sycorax re-imagines the story of Shakepeare's most powerful witch. Sycorax is published by Quercus on 27th February. You can find Sycorax and A Girl Made of Air on the Suffolk Libraries catalogue.
This is a question that often embarrasses me because the answer, sadly, is no. I would love to have a romantic picture of myself as a child squirreled away with my little pile of books, but it’s just not true. From an early age I disliked school and books seemed to fall within that domain, so I really wasn’t a big reader. But I did love storytelling. So, I made things up and told a lot of stories. Then with my best friend, Suzy, we played out our odd little tales in the playground. I remember one favorite was about a yellow dog that came from space. But there were many mermaids and fairies, too.
Our local library was actually a shed on the corner of the park where we went every week with school. The books I chose, time after time, were the differently coloured books of fairies by Andrew Lang. I’d often renew them over again until I finally got around to reading the stories because I didn’t find it easy to sit still and focus (I was too busy dreaming!). I was definitely a fairytale fan! The Brothers Grimm of course but also the great Hans Andersen. Suzy’s mum was Danish, so those stories played a huge part in shaping my love of strange tales. I only started reading books properly for pleasure at sixteen years old, and it was Wuthering Heights that got me. It got me and it never let me go.
I was a performer and theatre creator for most of my life. After trying to work as an actor in London throughout my twenties, I eventually moved to Paris where I continued training in physical and devised theatre then set up my own theatre company. After almost a decade in France I moved back to London and that’s when writing took over. I didn’t know where I was going with it, so I applied to Birkbeck University to do a Creative Writing Degree. As I couldn’t really afford the fees, I did the course part time over four years, working in a shoe shop in the daytime and studying at night. A Girl Made of Air started life as coursework. I liked the circus world, so boldly decided to make it into a novel. In the end, it took about eight/nine years from starting to write the book to getting it published.
She came together slowly as the novel progressed. At first, she was much tougher than she ended up, with a real hard nut personality. As the writing progressed, she moved and shifted into being a character with a far deeper emotional breadth than I’d originally imagined. She’s not an easy character to like at times, but even so, I do love her, and she became strangely real to me by the end.
Sometimes. It depends on how I’m feeling, health wise. I live with chronic illness so it’s not always easy to have a routine I can stick to. In general, I write when the day is still young and fresh. I’m more physically able to sit at my desk for a few hours in the morning when my energy levels are pretty good. I start to flag at lunchtime and usually I’m finished between 2 – 3pm when I can really crash. I do like to get out for a walk if I can, but again, there are different factors at play when it comes to pain and energy levels, so it’s not always possible. It’s a very small life, really, being a writer. To write a novel you must be on your own, in your writing place, putting the words down, for long periods of time. It’s expansive in that you’re constantly delving into imagined worlds, people and places, but it’s also tiny. It’s just you, alone with the words on the screen, and they often don’t behave very well, giving you no end of trouble!
Sycorax is the imagined life story of the ‘foul witch’ of that name from Shakespeare’s The Tempest. As she’s already dead when the action of the play begins, we only know about her through the ranting of Prospero (jealous perhaps?) and through the fact Caliban is her son. My aim was to give voice to this absent, silenced woman. I tell her tale through the prism of feminism, and with a focus on how women with illness and disability have been viewed in art and literature throughout history. It’s also a fable, a lyrical story about a magical storm witch, and a coming-of-age tale about finding our power and strengths. When it comes to the actual writing, I also wanted to make the novel as beautiful a book as possible, to do with language what a composer might do with music. So hopefully there’s something in there for everyone.
Yes. What little information we are told about her is really helpful in shaping a story. But really, she’s a blank canvas in that strong framework of the play. And that was incredibly exciting to me as a writer.
I have some ideas for future novels and have tentatively started jotting something down. It’s full of folklore, nature and angry women. I’m still at the biting my lip, frowning stage.
There are so many. Most recently then: Elif Shafak, Susanna Clarke, Sarah Perry and JR Thorp.
“Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.”
I’m a trained clown and have been known to play a musical saw.
