This dissertation is the opening three chapters to my young adult folk horror novel, THE OTHERWOOD in which we meet a trio of young witches—Taryn, Lyra, and Cerise—whose coven is on the cusp of a significant change. When their current high priestess passes away, someone new must take up her mantle both as the coven’s leader and the forest’s Hedge Witch. For there is another world lurking underneath the one they have always known, one of spirits and shades, deities and demons. This is the Otherwood, the land that all witches are sworn to protect, and, without a hedge witch, the Veil keeping the spirit world separate from the mortal one will begin to crumble. When Taryn rejects the call, malevolent spirits begin to seep through the cracks, and she must band together with her friends to fix her mistakes before all she has ever known is destroyed.

The extract is accompanied by a critical essay titled “Seeking Comfort from a Horrifying Reality in Horror Fiction: An Analysis of the Resurgence of Folk Horror as A Response to Increasing Limitations on Women’s Healthcare and Reproductive Rights” which seeks to investigate the reasons that folk horror has returned to mainstream media as a popular genre in the last few years. Through my research into the subject, I found a lot of the folk horror novels I was reading to be written by women, specifically with a focus in the American South and believe it may be linked to recent infringements on women’s access to abortion after Roe vs. Wade was overturned. The essay will examine two recent young adult folk horror novels and contextualise them with the current socio-political climate in America to defend this theory.