Mae Tang is the author of ‘Away With the Fairies’ in our first anthology of folklore-inspired stories, Oaths and Offerings. Mae is a Chinese Singaporean immigrant living in the North of England. She was a winner of Augur Magazine’s 2023 Microfiction Contest, and her first novel was shortlisted for the Hachette Children’s Novel Award 2025.
Could you tell us how the idea for your story came together?
Mae Tang: For ‘Away With The Fairies’, I drew on the tradition of leaving food and drink out for the fey. My initial reaction was to feel curious about what the fairies might make of foods from a different culture. As I thought about that, I had a feeling of worlds colliding. There is the world of British folklore, with its local legends and ancient traditions. Folklore can provide guidance on how to navigate a range of supernatural situations. If you enter the realm of the Fair Folk, don’t eat their food, because it might mean you can never leave. But if you want to court their favour, leave some of your own food out for them instead.
There is the world of contemporary Britain, riven by tensions stoked up around immigration, and, if you are an immigrant, around questions of belonging. And there is the otherworldly fairy realm, populated by beings whose powers are unknowable, but who can still be appealed to – if you have learned the correct method to do so.
I thought about a main character who, like the fairies, is moving between worlds: Zhenyi, a Chinese Singaporean immigrant, who brings her own sensibilities, her own favourite foods to the practice of making offerings to the fairies. With that, she also brings to the Fair Folk her conflict with a neighbour, whose focus is on how Zhenyi does not belong in the community, and whose intervention might also result in the fairies losing their offerings.
Finally, I had an idea that if whatever happened in the story was sufficiently mysterious, if it left locals talking and speculating about those events, some aspect of it might eventually pass into the folklore of the village as well.
What advice would you share with budding short story writers?
The short stories I’ve read that stay with me, are the ones that evoke strong feelings. I think you’re more likely to be able to do that for a reader if you write about topics that land for you emotionally.
Could you tell us about your favourite Northern bookshop?
The Portal Bookshop in York sells science fiction, fantasy and LGBTQIA+, books. It’s always felt like a very friendly and welcoming space to me, and the owners are knowledgeable about a range of titles.
Finally, do you have a favourite piece of folklore?
Selkies fascinated me at one point, because of the way they move between worlds, and the vulnerability of what happens if their sealskin falls into the wrong hands. In contrast, some of the scarier folkloric entities feel like they could be out of a horror movie. I would never call them favourites, but what they stoke in my imagination is certainly memorable – the nuckelavee springs to mind, as an example of pure nightmare fuel!
You can find Mae on Bluesky, and read her story along with other works of folklore-inspired fiction in our upcoming anthology, out 4th June.
