Heba Al-Wasity writes gothic fantasy where haunted houses, restless spirits, and dangerous bargains sit alongside questions of displacement, inequality, and belonging. Her debut novel, Weavingshaw, emerged from an unusually personal path to fiction. She had carried the idea for the story since her teenage years, but it was not until the strain of working in medicine during the COVID-19 pandemic that she began writing it in earnest. What started as a way to process difficult experiences and sleepless nights eventually became a bestselling gothic romantasy.
Born in Libya to Iraqi refugee parents, Al-Wasity grew up in Canada before moving to the United Kingdom at eighteen to study medicine. She has since worked in emergency care, psychiatric inpatient settings, and primary care, experiences that have given her a close view of vulnerability, poverty, racism, and social inequality. Those concerns find their way naturally into her fiction. Beneath the supernatural mysteries of Weavingshaw is a world shaped by industrialization, class divisions, displacement, political unrest, and the unequal ways societies treat those with little power.
The original idea for Weavingshaw began with a challenge between Al-Wasity and one of her sisters to imagine a story about a building with a soul. While her sister envisioned a haunted school, Al-Wasity imagined a mysterious house on the moors. Years later, that house became the heart of her debut. She treats Weavingshaw almost as a character in its own right, giving the estate its own presence and emotional influence over the people who enter it.
Her literary influences include classic gothic novels such as Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. Their influence can be felt in her interest in brooding landscapes, hidden histories, complicated relationships, and romance built through tension rather than instant attraction. At the same time, her own experiences give the familiar gothic tradition a contemporary edge, particularly through her exploration of migration, cultural identity, class, and belonging.
Weavingshaw quickly took on a life of its own after publication in 2026. The novel became an instant #1 Sunday Times bestseller, was chosen as an ABA Indie Introduce Pick, and attracted international attention with translation rights sold in ten languages. Its success launched a planned trilogy and established Al-Wasity as a notable new voice in gothic fantasy romance.
She continues to balance writing with her medical career in northern England. For Al-Wasity, the two worlds are not as distant as they might seem. Medicine has taught her to look closely at people in moments of fear, vulnerability, and uncertainty, while fiction gives her another way to explore the forces that shape their lives. In her stories, the ghosts may be supernatural, but many of the wounds haunting the living are unmistakably human.
