One of the communities of practices that I foster for more than five years is the Writing (with) plants project. As some attendees know, during the online writing(with)plants sessions, there is a creative writing component. Afterwards, some participants share their unfinished poem or story. I have heard a great deal of creative work over the years … and to my ears, it is all fiction.
For your information, a work of fiction is a narrative created from the author’s imagination. It is not really based on strict fact or history. Although the stories shared during the circles may draw on real experiences and infuse the creative work, they remain fiction.
In matter of fact, plant fiction.
Plant fiction refers to speculative, science fiction and fantasy narratives where plants play central, sentient and even monstrous roles rather than acting as mere backgrounds. It explores botanical sentience, human-nature dynamics, and ecological collapse through imaginative world-building.
An ecofeminist lens to unravel the hero narrative
However, as plant fiction acknowledges vegetal intelligence, there is a trap we can easily fall into: seeing plants (and other beings) as vengeful and dangerous. For example, in Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (a book I enjoyed) or Uprooted by Naomi Novik, the fungi and flora are a bit portrayed (too much) as threats.
This is not new. Certain plants (e.g. Giant Hogweed, Japanese Knotweed, the Triffids, and Tree Mallow which we invited already in our writing(with)plants practice) are villainised in contemporary myths in particular regions. They are blamed for reduced biodiversity, yet they often arrive in these places precisely because humans created the conditions for them to thrive.
From vampires to plants… (to people)
When Patrycja Pichnicka-Trivedi studied narratives of vampires and other nonhuman beings (2025), she noticed a persistent pattern: stories tend to sort their characters into familiar roles:
- the hero,
- the villain,
- the victim, and, sometimes with a wink of irony, the “stake of interest.”
Her work reveals how deeply these narrative habits shape the way we understand the world. She also traced the associations writers make, how, for instance, vampires are often cast as villains from a mysterious, threatening “East,” such as Transylvania, and how entire places become shadowed by those associations.
Reading her work, I began to wonder what might happen if we applied this same lens to plant fiction.
Do plants, forests, fungi, and landscapes fall into these same narrative roles? Or do they resist them? Even now, many stories still lean on the old structure, the hero’s journey. Yet, when we read closely, something more entangled begins to emerge.
I introduced this idea during our writing(with)Killer Orchid session back in autumn 2025. I noticed, though, that participants in that session perhaps became a little stuck in self-analytical mode, and needed more space to reflect on the positions and associations they were giving to their plants.
Plants as villains ?
When you listen to certain experts vilifying particular plants in a region or listen to heroes in vampire movies talking about vampires, it is difficult to ignore how closely that language mirrors the rhetoric used by right-wing voices about migrants or queer people. We talk about vampires and plants, but often we talk about all who we see as the other, as weird, as strange, as not-us. As I celebrate diversity, I like to watch out and remind others to watch out who we blame, villainize, scapegoat…
My allergy for superhero stories
There is also another issue with the hero narratives where we have a clear hero and a clear villain. I do not enjoy superhero stories. We millennials may have grown up with too many tales of the Chosen One (Harry Potter, Marvel, even Lord of the Rings) stories that nurture the peculiar idea that once you destroy the villain, the ring, the horcrux, everything returns to normal. Whatever that means, the ‘normal’.
Consider the popularity of Dune, or how certain Star Wars prequels, sequels, and spin-offs quietly invite you to conclude that destroying a Death Star does not bring peace. Characters who begin as heroes (e.g. Anakin Skywalker, Paul Atreides) end up as villains, because they never truly dismantled the system that generates so much violence in the first place.
These stories call for an understanding of systems … and they debunk the myth of the hero and the technological fix saving us all (from what exactly?).
And yet, many of us still write, read, and watch stories that follow this heroic narrative. So let us go a little deeper and educate our eco critical reading muscles and wonder if we want to support certain narratives and tropes.
Demonstration
Out of respect for the community, I have chosen not to share any examples of fiction created during or as a result of writing(with)plants sessions, mostly as they are not finished. I am going to look at nine works of published plant fiction through Patrycja Pichnicka-Trivedi‘s ecofeminist lens:
- Mexican Gothic — Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- Pollen — Jeff Noon
- Annihilation — Jeff VanderMeer
- For the Wolf — Hannah Whitten
- Uprooted — Naomi Novik
- This Poison Heart — Kalynn Bayron
- This Wicked Fate — Kalynn Bayron
- The Overstory — Richard Powers
- The Island of Missing Trees — Elif Shafak
As I will need to reveal a few plot details, please close this blogpost if you would rather avoid spoilers.
In Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, we encounter a haunting, sentient house whose strange vitality is rooted in a mycelial network threaded through its walls. At first glance, this appears to follow a familiar gothic script: the uncanny house, the creeping plants, the sense that nature itself is the threat. Yet, as the story unfolds, the true horror reveals itself elsewhere. The real villain is not the fungal intelligence, but the deeply violent human ideology of eugenics. The novel reminds us that what we are taught to fear (plants, decay, entanglement) may be far less dangerous than the systems humans construct.
A similar unsettling occurs in Pollen by Jeff Noon and Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. Both novels imagine worlds in which nonhuman nature transforms — even overtakes — human environments. These stories can easily be read as horror: the loss of control, the dissolution of identity, the unknown pressing in. And yet, they do something more subtle. They ask us to sit with discomfort, to consider what it might mean not to dominate, but to adapt and to become part of something larger (or actually re-member that we have always been part of a bigger intelligence).
At times, reading these works, I found myself uncertain where my allegiance lay. Was I hoping for the humans to survive unchanged, or for the emergence of a new, more entangled world? These are not simple hero narratives. They destabilise the very idea of the hero.
One might even think of Poison Ivy, so often cast as a villain for wanting plant life to reclaim the planet. Against her stands Batman , a figure of wealth and order, but also of violence. The question lingers: who, in an ecological sense, is the hero?
In the marketing for For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten and Uprooted by Naomi Novik, we are told we will encounter enchanted, sentient forests … as if sentience were a rare enchantment, rather than a fundamental quality of living systems. These novels, rich in atmosphere, are perfect for late autumn evenings, when the boundary between the cultivated garden and the wild wood feels especially thin.
Here, the forest is not purely villainous. It is often described as “corrupted” or “contaminated”. However, even in their darkness, these forests evoke a more complicated truth: they are not enemies, but mirrors of imbalance.
Such stories may nevertheless leave us with a lingering unease towards overgrown spaces … towards the very wildness we might otherwise wish to reconnect with… The plants are not even considered to be allies.
Noteworthy, another pattern emerged in both stories: the familiar romantasy trope of the young woman and the ancient, troubled man in a youthful body. I cannot help but wonder … where are the stories in which a woman in her forties meets a partner who does not require her emotional labour for the greater part of the narrative?
The duology This Poison Heart and This Wicked Fate by Kalynn Bayron offers a different, refreshing approach.
Rooted in Greek mythology and centred on Black queer characters, these novels give plants a vivid, active presence.
While we do not read from the plants’ point of view, their agency is undeniable: they protect, collaborate, and shape the story alongside the human protagonist. The poisonous plants are the hero’s allies.
There is also an educational thread, introducing readers to species such as water hemlock and other poisonous plants.
More importantly, these books carry a sense of queer joy … something still too rare in contemporary stories. They invite readers, particularly white readers, to engage with stories that centre Black queer lives not only in struggle, but in vitality, magic, and connection. More of this, please!
I know that many people love The Overstory by Richard Powers… I enjoyed reading it, but I do not love it. It took me ages to finish this book.
This book is not, in any straightforward sense, a hero story. Instead, it unfolds as a web of interwoven lives, human and arboreal. Inspired in part by ideas such as the “wood wide web,” the novel foregrounds trees not as background scenery, but as central presences. And yet, even here, we do not hear directly from the nonhuman voices. This is a deliberate choice, and one that raises questions about representation and imagination. For some readers, the book opens new ways of seeing. For others, particularly those already familiar with environmental research, it may feel less revelatory.
Finally, The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak offers something truly tender: a fig tree as narrator. For over a decade, Shafak has returned, again and again, to themes of memory, exile, and belonging. In this novel, she experiments with form and voice, weaving together human and nonhuman perspectives.
Set against the backdrop of political conflict and displacement, the story resonates deeply in our current moment … when both people and plants are uprooted by war, by climate change, by shifting borders. The fig tree becomes one of the main characters too… because of the relational approach that Elif Shafak took in her story.
Across these nine works, the familiar categories of hero, villain, and victim begin to loosen. Plants are not merely passive scenery, nor are they simply threats. They are agents, companions, witnesses … and, sometimes, teachers.
Do you know of other examples?
How do you give agency to the plants in your stories?
Do you find yourself reinforcing negative associations?
Can we write stories in which plants are the heroes? Or should we move beyond the hero narrative altogether?
Ready to write plant fiction yourself?
If this reading has stirred something in you, I warmly invite you to go further.
Visit the Book shop to pick up your copy today.
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