Hello and welcome to this Track of Words author interview where today I’m joined by the brilliant E.J. Swift to talk about her wonderful new novel When There Are Wolves Again, which is out now in hardback and published by Arcadia. Described by Lavie Tidhar as having ‘perfectly merged literary and speculative fiction’, it’s a book about rewilding and the importance of connections with nature, but also about coping with the challenges of family and the ups and downs of life, and it’s absolutely fantastic! I loved it, so I was delighted to have the chance to put this interview together. I hope you enjoy it.
ToW: To begin with, could you give us an overview of When There Are Wolves Again and what readers can expect from it?
E.J. Swift: The book opens in 2070, at Beltane, with two women sitting beside a campfire and reflecting on their life stories. We follow them across the previous half-century, through the fight to restore Britain’s depleted landscapes and once-native species, through protests, family rifts and personal tragedies. It’s about our connection to the more-than-human world, and trying to find a way through the climate crisis, and about hope.
ToW: Without spoiling anything, could you give us a quick sense of who your two main characters are, and what readers might need to know about them?
EJS: Lucy is five years old when the novel begins, full of curiosity and joy for life. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she is sent to live with her grandparents, and discovers her grandmother’s love of birds. Hester, a filmmaker, is thirty-five, uncertain where she’s ended up, or how to reconcile her past. Her story begins at Chornobyl, filming the feral dog population around the plant.
ToW: Before we get into the details, I’d love to know whether there was a particular catalyst for this novel – was there an idea, a moment, a place, that set you on the path to writing this specific story?
EJS: I’ve been interested in rewilding for a long time, both in terms of dedicated restoration projects, and the unplanned rewilding of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. There’s some incredible footage of Prypyat in a David Attenborough documentary that is both haunting and beautiful, you can see how tall the trees have grown after being left alone for decades. Then I came across the Dogs of Chornobyl programme, which supports veterinary care for dogs in the Zone, and that sparked something. But I also wanted this novel to be set predominantly in Britain, thinking about our landscapes here – the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.
ToW: You’ve structured this book in an interesting way, with a split narrative which moves through different time periods alternating between your two main characters. Can you talk a bit about why you chose that approach and what it allowed you to do?
EJS: I tend to deviate towards multistranded narratives, and in this case the split allowed me to show two different ways of responding to the climate crisis: for Lucy through activism and for Hester through witnessing and documenting. I chose a 50-year time period as that felt long enough to show social and political developments, and visible change within a rewilded landscape, whilst covering a large part of a human lifespan. It was also a really interesting challenge for me, as I’d not written characters over an extended time period before.
ToW: You also took somewhat different approaches for each character’s chapters, writing Lucy in first person and Hester in second. What inspired that choice?
EJS: For Lucy’s voice, I knew from the start it would be first person, as she is telling her story to Hester. I’ve always loved narratives with that kind of storytelling frame. Hester I wrote initially in third person and then on an instinct decided to try second person. There’s something about the second person which is both very intimate but also estranging, and that felt right for Hester’s role as a filmmaker and her sense of being on the outside looking in.
ToW: Reading about nature can feel daunting, and you certainly tackled some pretty bleak possibilities head on in When There Are Wolves Again. I was really interested, though, in how you ultimately remained positive despite everything. Was that always the plan, to retain that sense of hope?
EJS: It was hugely important to me that hope won out in this novel. Partly after all the research I did for The Coral Bones about the impacts of climate breakdown on the Great Barrier Reef, which broke my heart. I needed to believe there is an alternative. I think of Wolves as a sister novel – whereas The Coral Bones explores what if we don’t act, Wolves asks what if we do, and what do we have to gain from a sustainable future. At the same time, it was important to acknowledge what is already baked in, and the need for mitigation and adaptation. There is no magic bullet. For these reasons Wolves is the hardest thing I’ve written – when faced with another depressing news story every day, at times it felt like pushing against the tide!
There’s a lovely sense of connection running through the book, linking the earth and the air, and even the stars – from Lucy and her gran’s love of swifts to the names of Hester’s dogs, and the backdrop of missions to Mars being planned and implemented. Can you talk a bit about where that stemmed from?
EJS: I’m glad that came through! I wanted the novel to reach for a more balanced relationship between the human and more-than-human world. So it was important, for example, that Hester’s relationships with her dog companions were equal to and perhaps more important than those with her fellow humans. I guess it’s trying to move the lens from a human-centric viewpoint towards something that values all life: the idea that ultimately, we all come from stardust.
ToW: Some of the book takes place at Knepp, which perfectly suits the narrative and was a real joy for me personally – reading Isabella Tree’s Wilding was my first introduction to the concept of rewinding, and I finally visited Knepp just a few weeks ago! Were you able to spend time in places like Knepp while researching and writing the book, and how did you find that?
EJS: I absolutely love Wilding. It’s become a keystone text for me. I visited Knepp in 2023 – I saw the famous Tamworth pigs rooting around, and the Exmoor ponies. It was great having read so much about it to experience that landscape in person, especially the concept of scrub regeneration. I remember looking at a young oak tree which had grown in a crazy bush shape, surrounded by protective thorny plants, and thinking wow, I’ve never seen an oak grow like that, this is how it wants to grow. I also visited temperate rainforest patches on the Isle of Bute and in St Nectan’s Glen in Cornwall, and explored the area around Kingussie in the Highlands, which was about as close as I could get to Balmoral.
ToW: I loved the way you explored both the pains and rewards of forging your own path, with Lucy and Hester both dealing with the difficulties of family members struggling to understand each other. What was it like digging into that theme?
EJS: I think any character choice that goes against expectations, whether societal or familial, is good fuel for dramatic purposes. You need there to be tension in a novel, some kind of struggle. But perhaps I also had in mind the way public discourse has become increasingly polarised, and the need for communication across boundaries.
ToW: What was your writing process like for this book? It’s so beautifully plotted and structured, and shot through with powerful themes, that I was reading it wondering how much you’d decided upon up front and how much developed over the course of writing it.
EJS: Thank you! It developed quite organically over the course of writing. When I began writing, I knew where it started and where it finished, and a couple of key events along the way, but that was about it! I’m a very disorganised writer, I have to work my way in. Then once I have a decent amount of text, I’ll start to tease out the themes and connections.
ToW: To finish off, if you had the opportunity to return one once-native animal (wolves notwithstanding) to Britain, what would you choose and why?
EJS: I think it has to be the lynx. Those ear tufts – their giant paw pads – who wouldn’t want to welcome these gorgeous cats back to our forests.
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Image credit: Ella Kemp 2025
E. J. Swift is a speculative fiction writer based in London. She is the author of The Osiris Project trilogy, a series set in a world radically altered by climate change, and Paris Adrift, a tale of bartenders and time travel in the City of Light. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Sunday Times short story award and the British Science Fiction Award, and has appeared in a variety of publications from Solaris, Salt Publishing, Jurassic London and Penguin Random House Digital. The Coral Bones, which was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Kitschies’ Red Tentacle and the British Science Fiction Association awards, was published in 2024.
Find out more at ejswift.co.uk.
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Thanks so much to E.J. for taking the time to chat to me. I hope you enjoyed this interview, and that it’s whetted your appetite for reading this fantastic novel!
When There Are Wolves Again is out now in hardback and published by Arcadia – click on the link below to order your copy.
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