Constant Discovery: Review of Nicola Griffith’s She Is Here

Jeremy Brett Under Review:She Is Here. Nicola Griffith. PM Press, February 2026. Nicola Griffith has always struck me as an intensely physical author, by which I mean that she imbues her work with an incredible sense of place. For example, her historical novels Hild and Menewood, into which Griffith infused decades of research into 7th-century England, unwind themselves effortlessly into a world where the reader feels at home. They feel deeply every breath of wind, every flow of water, every sword stroke, every echo of footstep on stone. The sheer physicality of living in the worlds she creates defines Griffith’s work, as does the emotional impact that comes from characters who often find themselves diminished, underestimated, or at odds with the existing social order. Griffith describes her work as a method of creating, accelerating, or accepting the need for change. As she wrote on her Patreon shortly before the release of her new collection She Is Here, “That long-ago tagline…