Culture Study Podcast - A Very Smart Conversation About Fantasy (and Romance) with Leigh Bardugo

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00:00:44.720 All right, on to today's show.

00:00:46.240 this is the culture study podcast and i'm ann helen peterson and i'm lee bardugo i'm the author

00:00:57.420 of shadow and bone six of crows ninth house the familiar and now the dregs editions of a six of

00:01:04.140 crows coming out for the 10th anniversary of six of crows so your books get recommended

00:01:09.820 constantly in the culture study community we do a lot of like book threads book concierge like

00:01:16.180 recommendations and that's how I started reading them was from readers recommending them to me

00:01:21.320 how do you describe your work to someone who's not familiar with it like the random like when

00:01:27.660 a doctor but you know they're always like what do you do and you're like I write books and they're

00:01:31.320 like what kind of books and you're like this is awkward how am I going to describe this so what

00:01:35.720 do you do well what I always say is um I write fantasy novels but that can mean a whole lot of

00:01:43.380 different things depending on what kind of fantasy you're interested in totally i think it really

00:01:49.300 depends like when somebody says where should i start that's always the question that that i can

00:01:54.320 say well if you are looking for a lighter read you could start with shadow and bone you know if

00:01:58.880 you like ya shadow and bone if you like um something with a little more grit and heft than

00:02:04.660 six of crows six dangerous outcasts one impossible heist and you can always tell when people i think

00:02:09.620 um men frequently lock in with the heist they're like heist you know i i've seen oceans 11 i enjoy

00:02:17.000 that sure um and if you're into more if you're ready to go someplace much darker and you enjoy

00:02:26.020 academic settings then i would point you to ninth house and if you like historical fiction i would

00:02:31.640 definitely point you to the familiar but they all they're really all about um

00:02:36.460 my desperate attempts to make magic seem real yeah and to sort of explore magic almost as a

00:02:46.520 kind of influence or commodity and yeah yeah I think too they're also almost and this was a

00:02:52.620 thread I didn't really see until I could step back and look at you know a decade of work and say

00:02:57.160 okay these are all stories about people who the world views as expendable and how they carve out

00:03:03.960 a place for themselves in it. Yeah. No. And like the thing I loved so much about Ninth House

00:03:10.740 and its sequel is that it understands how power and secrecy are intertwined, right? And magic as

00:03:20.240 power, like as a form, something that you can leverage over other people. But then what happens

00:03:24.940 when someone who you think shouldn't have that power has it? I mean, it really is about access.

00:03:30.620 And something I discovered when I went to college was there was this kind of secret

00:03:34.280 language that operated.

00:03:36.280 And it's still, I was talking to some friends about this last night, that the class anxiety

00:03:41.300 I developed in college kind of never went away.

00:03:43.960 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:03:45.020 It's still with me now.

00:03:47.140 And you, you know, I was a smart kid.

00:03:49.900 And then all of a sudden you're in this environment and you encounter people who just know the

00:03:54.140 code.

00:03:54.700 They know how to work the system.

00:03:56.720 They know how to dress right, eat right, talk right.

00:03:59.820 and for me that was sort of one of the most powerful guiding principles as I went into the

00:04:06.640 story was here was this girl Alex who had been given this opportunity and wanted desperately

00:04:11.600 to make the most of it and is doing everything she can to but the only way she's really going

00:04:16.840 to be able to navigate that world is to essentially accept her difference who she is and what she can

00:04:23.540 do that nobody else can and to sort of become the natural detective she was always meant to be but

00:04:28.560 Right. And like assimilation is not possible. Like you can try to assimilate, right? But you cannot smooth all of your edges, especially.

00:04:36.120 No, my feeling has always been they can smell it on me. Like, oh, you're not old money, are you?

00:04:44.220 That's not Montauk that I smell on you, is it? It's the San Fernando Valley.

00:04:50.120 So you are in the middle of a book tour.

00:04:52.880 Yes.

00:04:53.340 What are you celebrating right now?

00:04:54.660 um I am celebrating the release of the invisible parade which is my first picture book I co-authored

00:05:02.880 it with John Picasio who is also the illustrator and it is a book set on the night of Dia de

00:05:09.220 Muertos when a young girl named Kala is grieving the death of her grandfather and she really

00:05:14.800 doesn't want to join in the celebrations honoring him but she makes herself go to the cemetery

00:05:20.300 anyway and she loses her family in the hustle and bustle and she encounters four mysterious

00:05:28.680 horsemen and each has a lesson to teach her about grief and what made you want I mean we're going

00:05:35.700 to talk about this throughout the entire episode but like switching modes like did this feel like

00:05:39.480 a challenge something that you wanted to do something that someone told you you could do

00:05:45.940 when you were like, well, I should try, like, how did you arrive here? Um, I mean, I always loved

00:05:52.040 picture books. I collected them when I was a teenager. I think, um, for me, it was very close

00:05:57.400 to both my love of poetry and my love of comic books. Like, uh, it was this relationship between

00:06:03.000 image and word that I found incredibly powerful. And you find such extraordinary art in these

00:06:08.820 books. They take years of an illustrator's life and you can really tell in the ones that have

00:06:13.100 care put into them. So I always wanted to write one. And I had particularly after my father's

00:06:20.880 death, I thought a lot about how much I would like to write a picture book that would help

00:06:25.940 families talk about grief and help kids and parents talk about grief. And I kept banding

00:06:32.500 around these ideas, but they were always sort of very, very poetic, very somber and a little

00:06:38.600 pretentious I'm not gonna lie yeah and then John who I had been friends with for years

00:06:44.520 came to me and he said um I have an idea for a book we should write together and I

00:06:49.020 honestly cringed because people say this to me a lot and it's usually literally a doctor did this

00:06:56.620 when I was in in a Las Vegas hospital room with a hole in my intestines this doctor literally

00:07:03.240 pitched me um and was like i want i will spit the you write it i have the idea and we'll split

00:07:09.880 the profit 70 30 and i was like sir to an iv also 70 30 are you freaking kidding i know right who

00:07:17.180 do you think is doing the work here this is an important lesson the work is not the idea ideas

00:07:21.440 are easy also only a man only a man would have proposed that split i'm just saying it was fairly

00:07:28.000 shocking and thankfully i was on some very serious painkillers and could not throw anything at him

00:07:32.620 But so when John said this to me, I was like, oh, God, how are we going to stay friends when I say no?

00:07:38.660 But then he said, it's the Wizard of Oz set in a graveyard.

00:07:42.380 And all of a sudden, my brain had sort of caught fire.

00:07:46.740 When you do hear an idea you love, I feel like I instantly can visualize it, start imagining it.

00:07:54.320 And I thought, oh, this is the way to this story about grief because this is an adventure.

00:08:00.380 It's not just me meditating on my feelings. This is a hero's journey where this young girl can actually experience this powerful journey through these cemetery gates. She can encounter the world of the dead and in that way, reconnect to the world of the living. And that was sort of our touchstone as we wrote that book.

00:08:22.580 Yeah. When you were growing up, you've described this in a few interviews, but like I have such a vivid picture of nerdy you as a teen. What did you read when you were a teen?

00:08:32.940 Oh, gosh. Well, I read everything off my parents' shelves, right? So I read, like, Ken Follett's, like, his Cold War books, way too young, way too young to be reading those.

00:08:47.560 Um, the things I really consumed kind of obsessively were, um, Stephen King. Yeah. Diana

00:08:54.280 Wynne Jones, Robin Hobb. Um, Dune was a very pivotal book for me. Um, I read, I, I wasn't that

00:09:03.720 this is, I shouldn't admit this, but I wasn't that into Lord of the Rings, but I was into

00:09:07.900 Dragonlance, which is basically Lord of the Rings redux. Um, and I read probably 30 books in that

00:09:15.340 series. But I also read, you know, I, that was also when I read Louise Erdrich for the first

00:09:22.000 time. Uh, our, one of our teachers assigned a short story called Flora that had been pulled

00:09:27.620 from, I think it's tracks and I had never, yeah, I had never encountered magical realism before.

00:09:34.620 And that story completely shifted the way that I looked at fiction. Um, so I read everything.

00:09:43.360 I read absolutely everything and but like my comfort reads the books I came back to again

00:09:47.920 again were like interview with a vampire and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption and

00:09:53.160 eyes of the dragon and I was I was a genre nerd you know like the thing about genre and especially

00:09:58.940 I think when you're a teen and looking for that escape of what I think of in my head as reading

00:10:04.060 like a teen right like that incredible immersion feeling is like you want the abundance like you

00:10:11.580 don't just like if there's only one book in a series you're like well what does this have to

00:10:16.040 offer me like you want there are 20 out there for me to lose myself in for not just tonight but like

00:10:24.040 months and then I can reread them I don't think I was that kind of reader when I was a kid I was

00:10:29.820 intimidated by series yeah I I was frequently drawn I often bought books just based on the

00:10:35.360 cover like I remember there was a series called I want to say Sunrunner's Fire by I want to say

00:10:40.720 Melanie Rahn, but I may be misremembering. And there was this one cover that I thought was just

00:10:45.260 so cool. And I was like, okay, I got to read three books to get there. That's fine. It was like book

00:10:50.540 four or something. So I think though that sense of immersion is so powerful. And I think also

00:10:59.200 you need those other worlds when you're growing up. I was a very, I was no surprise. People who

00:11:08.940 become authors are not kids who fit in. But I was really lost when I was, especially in my junior

00:11:15.180 high years. And these books gave me worlds where I could imagine myself thriving, where being smart

00:11:24.340 and creative and prepared and clever and adaptable were so much more important than the things that

00:11:32.360 seemed important in the world I was stuck in, where I wasn't pretty and I wasn't cute and I

00:11:38.740 wasn't cheerful and I didn't have the right body and I didn't know the right thing to wear and I

00:11:43.600 didn't get invited to parties. Here was a world where things mattered and they had stakes and where

00:11:48.040 I could potentially be a hero. My junior high fixation was Star Trek The Next Generation.

00:11:54.060 Nice. The show but then also the books and I think so much of it was like it was a legible

00:12:00.220 world for sure but like the uniforms to me felt so comforting because I spent so much time thinking

00:12:07.060 about what I was going to wear just constantly like just so much anxiety and so I was like

00:12:12.600 I yeah and also intelligence valued right like what a concept something that is at least at that

00:12:19.120 point and where I went to school in a small town in Idaho not was not what was valued or like that

00:12:26.060 I thought would make me important so that other universe was incredibly beguiling to me yes I

00:12:33.300 can absolutely see that I was actually in uniforms from basically the time I was five

00:12:37.880 which just meant when I went to college I spent every day like an hour trying to figure out what

00:12:43.600 to wear because I didn't understand everything was costuming to me right am I today yeah yeah

00:12:49.100 I mean that's a good a better way to think about it than like how am I gonna get I mean I guess it

00:12:56.720 like even when I was obsessed with like getting a shirt that just said Calvin Klein on it

00:13:02.700 from Macy's for $32 or like just said Mossimo. I think that's partially why I got into first

00:13:11.980 punk and then goth was it was this it has its own code right let's not pretend that's not about a

00:13:18.020 certain kind of conformity either but it has a very specific these are specific aesthetics that

00:13:23.480 reject what is immediately popular. And those aesthetics don't change over time. The kids who

00:13:29.680 are goth now look the same as I did when I was 15. So that there's a certain sense of permanence

00:13:36.680 and sort of an attachment to a subculture that feels, I don't know, a little bit that is

00:13:43.040 rebellious in its own way, but that I think also gives you a kind of niche that you don't have

00:13:48.140 otherwise yes and i was too i was too scared to be goth which is like a great regret right that to be

00:13:56.220 to like embrace a subculture and i think part of it too was there were like one and a half goth

00:14:01.540 kids right like there was one it's not too late you come over get you some black lace some veils

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00:18:31.260 So usually on the show, we pick a topic and then we find the right guest.

00:18:35.240 This time we were like, you can come on the show. Let's talk about anything that we want.

00:18:40.620 And so we just asked readers because we have so many listeners and readers who love your stuff to

00:18:45.160 come up with questions to ask you, and they came up with tons. So we're going to talk about YA

00:18:51.240 versus adult, that naughty understanding, like K-N-O-T-T, not N-A-U-G-T. Could be both. 0.56

00:18:59.840 Fantasy and romanticy, all sorts of stuff. So this first one question is about genre,

00:19:05.020 and it comes from Jen. I have two questions. So the first one is,

00:19:09.980 your novels all have romance in them, and they are fantasy, but I wouldn't label them as

00:19:14.160 romanticy, what is the defining characteristic of romanticy? Two, the romance genre is very

00:19:20.540 defined like tropes, happily ever afters, whereas the fantasy genre is a bit more loose. When do

00:19:26.320 you think combining the genres is most successful and least successful? So I was reading an interview

00:19:31.480 with you and you said something that you already said, you just like teed us up, which is that like

00:19:36.880 I love genre. And I know you were talking about genre books, but I think that we both love thinking

00:19:43.700 about genre as a concept and like how it gets challenged all of those things so let's see if

00:19:50.140 we can work through this question in order yeah i love that i love that jen was like i see you

00:19:55.300 don't write romanticy define it for me so i feel like she's she's set a challenge and i appreciate

00:20:00.920 that thank you for throwing that gauntlet down um i mean look i i'm inclined to say that it is

00:20:06.740 that romanticy much like ya they are not actually genres they are categories they're marketing

00:20:12.420 categories. And when I was, and I think anytime one of these categories kind of takes over when

00:20:19.580 it starts driving the sales and publishing, people get very invested in trying to figure

00:20:24.520 out what it is. So when I was starting out back in 2012, and I started out in young adult before

00:20:29.800 I moved to adult, I think I was on something like seven panels where the panel was just titled,

00:20:36.200 What is YA? And I think now those questions are being posed about romanticy. The best, okay, I'm going to take a shot at this. Please don't set fire to me on the internet if I get this wrong. But I think that in fantasy, as most people think about it, there's a primary goal that is to fight a war or solve a murder or go on a quest for an object, whatever it is.

00:21:02.840 that's the kind of foregrounded plot yeah and then the romance happens either as a subplot or is

00:21:10.660 barely even suggested if it exists at all and I actually think I think actually a great example

00:21:17.180 of it not existing but still being a driver would be the x-files um which was my first shipping show

00:21:22.940 and that launched launched you know a thousand ships and I think there's so especially in the

00:21:27.780 original series, there's so little actual romance, but there's no question that their relationship

00:21:34.320 is this primary driver for the show. Okay. So, and then with Romanticy, I think you just,

00:21:39.360 that lens shifts focus a little bit. It's not that there isn't a war or a quest or a murder to solve.

00:21:45.480 It's that the romantic relationship is in the foreground and that relationship and its success

00:21:51.720 or failure is actually more fundamental than to solving this backplot than the plot itself.

00:21:58.520 Does that make sense?

00:21:59.600 Yeah, no, I think that, yeah, and I like your use of the word lens here because it's like

00:22:04.320 a lens going in and out, like what is the lens focusing on?

00:22:07.380 What is slightly out of focus when the lens goes in and out, right?

00:22:11.720 And then I think the sort of people find their subgenres within that category.

00:22:15.540 Yep. So I would be inclined to say that the expectation of that marketing category is that there will be more explicit sexual content, but I don't actually know if that's true. I think there's probably a pretty wide range within the category and people sort of have to find their authors or their niche within that.

00:22:35.140 And same with I'll see people say, you know, I only want first person or I only want this particular trope.

00:22:40.360 And that's when the genre becomes really does become a genre as opposed to a category and becomes kind of hyper specific.

00:22:46.220 Right. I think about the scholar Linda Williams, who's this famous genre scholar.

00:22:51.760 And she was working with film and television in the way that she thought about this.

00:22:55.180 But she defined melodrama not as a genre, but as a mode.

00:22:59.840 and so you can have an action film that is a melodrama you can have a drama that is a

00:23:07.860 melodrama and it like there are all of these understandings of like how a melodrama works

00:23:13.960 in terms of trying to sort the world into something that is morally legible like that

00:23:18.980 is the overarching historical purpose of melodrama but then it can be mapped onto so

00:23:25.220 many different genres. That's so funny because I just watched, I had never watched Yellowstone

00:23:30.660 and we watched a couple episodes of Yellowstone. Yeah. And I, it was somehow not what I was

00:23:35.220 expecting how soapy it is, but that is exactly, it's, it looks like this Western, you have these

00:23:40.680 tough talking, tough riding men and so forth, but it is absolutely melodrama. And to me feels cut

00:23:48.740 much more from the same cloth as like dynasty in Dallas from my youth. Yeah, absolutely. And I think

00:23:53.780 that that's one of those things where like because of the way that genre is oftentimes like ascribed

00:23:59.660 with gender connotations that we're like oh well that would never be a melodrama like oh yellowstone

00:24:06.120 could not be a soap or a tom cruise movie couldn't be a soap right if we're using kind of like soapy

00:24:12.200 and melodrama somewhat interchangeably but like absolutely there's so many tom cruise movies that

00:24:17.060 are soapy when i went to see dune um dune was you know this touchstone story for me growing up but

00:24:23.460 when I went to see Doon, I was like, oh my God, this is young adult. This very special boy with

00:24:29.280 his very special powers who makes this beautiful, very special girl who also, you know, like I was

00:24:35.180 like, okay, this is definitely young adult, but it's couched in all of this super deep world

00:24:39.960 building. And yet, you know, different time, different place, different marketing strategy,

00:24:45.040 who knows? Right, right. No, that's so interesting. Especially too, with like casting

00:24:50.680 timothy chalamet like the casting is doing work in terms of like sure even slotting it as as more

00:24:57.480 appealing to ya as in like very different vibe than david lynch casting very different hair

00:25:05.180 situation yes okay our next question comes from kirsty and it's about something she's noticed in

00:25:11.820 the fantasy genre melody's gonna read it for us a lot of fantasy appears to be much less concerned

00:25:17.380 with world building than it is with the creation of a central relationship. It feels like a lot

00:25:22.440 of newer or popular work is starting with a set of tropes or a relationship endpoint and then

00:25:27.460 spiraling out from there. I know that there are authors building vast, detailed worlds. However,

00:25:32.520 it does feel like a lot of the literature that is hitting the mainstream is shifting focus away

00:25:36.720 from the world building. Are authors and publishers being encouraged to put focus on covering tropes

00:25:42.700 at the expense of creating more expansive worlds?

00:25:46.620 Yeah, this is like building on that other question.

00:25:48.980 And I think-

00:25:49.520 Yeah, we're deep into the romanticy now.

00:25:52.440 So yeah, I think this is a diplomatic way of asking

00:25:55.180 if publishers are pressuring authors to write romanticy.

00:25:59.420 I may be wrong.

00:26:00.580 Yeah, no, I think, yeah.

00:26:03.220 And the answer is yes and no.

00:26:06.680 So I'm lucky enough to have a readership

00:26:10.000 who knows the way I write and has and brings certain expectations to the to those books.

00:26:16.760 And I think if I suddenly pivoted to a market trend, it I don't think people would be satisfied

00:26:23.120 by that. And I'm not saying that if I suddenly got the like, that's where my brain was going,

00:26:29.100 I wouldn't go there. But I think that would be a shift in my own work. That said, yeah,

00:26:36.360 Yeah. Romanticy has sort of dominated the bestseller list for the last couple of years.

00:26:40.940 That's a very real thing. Publishers operate on very narrow margins. And they're much like

00:26:47.100 Hollywood, always looking for the big hits. And so they absolutely have shifted. And you can see

00:26:51.640 this very clearly in the way they market books and the way that they're acquiring books and series.

00:26:59.140 And I certainly know people who are newer to the publishing process who are getting pressured to

00:27:06.080 slot books into that mode and that mold. And that certainly creates also a pressure on aspiring

00:27:15.560 writers who think, oh, if I want to sell a novel, this is where I have to go. The only problem with

00:27:22.820 that is trends come and go. The books that are popular now were not popular eight years ago,

00:27:29.160 which were different from the books popular eight years before that. I always think back to when I

00:27:32.960 I was, you know, in my early teens and the books, the big bestsellers that I was reading

00:27:39.820 off my sister's shelf were, you know, Judith Krantz, Jackie Collins, Sidney Sheldon.

00:27:44.660 Daniel Steele.

00:27:45.640 Well, Daniel Steele is still a titan, but she's still publishing.

00:27:48.740 But all those other names have largely been forgotten, which is a shame because Sidney

00:27:52.560 Sheldon, despite how wildly homophobic his books were, was an absolute master of plot.

00:27:59.660 Like you can learn a lot by reading a Sidney Sheldon book.

00:28:02.960 All of that said, I think it is a little unfair to the people who are out there aspiring because

00:28:09.360 unless you're a very fast writer and you are acquired quickly and then your publisher crashes

00:28:15.440 that book, brings it out in roughly six months or less, you're playing a dangerous game. You're

00:28:21.700 gambling against when that tide will turn and the market will shift to thrillers or cozy mysteries

00:28:28.280 or, um, whatever it may be. We don't know. What is it going to be? We don't know. Nobody knows.

00:28:34.020 Look, nobody ever sees the trend coming until the trend is here and then they play catch up. And

00:28:40.240 my concern right now is that I think, I think that people are, and I think this is partially

00:28:50.500 because of social media, it's partially because of the way marketing is operating right now, but

00:28:54.340 that the expectations of romanticity are being put across all fantasy books and i think that's

00:29:00.540 frustrating both for authors and for readers because it doesn't work that way we're not all

00:29:04.700 writing it i've been thinking too about how a lot of fanfic is being optioned and redone right like

00:29:13.300 is being recrafted into into original text um and i wonder how that is also influenced like because

00:29:19.600 if you have like a fandom is always going to place the relationship first yes that's where

00:29:25.440 fan fiction that's where fan fiction comes from is I didn't get enough of this or I wanted to see

00:29:29.620 this relationship that didn't happen or I want to see this alternative alternate universe where

00:29:34.880 they're not fighting this battle but they can just run a coffee shop like yeah that's that is

00:29:39.240 the heart of fan fiction yeah so you get the relationship forward positioning I guess would

00:29:44.940 be the way to say it that's it that's interesting I've thought much about that well a friend of

00:29:48.620 mine pointed out and I think this is very true that one of the one of the pleasures of reading

00:29:52.840 I've never been a I'm too old I came up at the wrong time and I did not get into thick but I've

00:29:59.740 always been sort of grateful to thick writers because they keep the series alive and people

00:30:05.140 engaged while you're trying to write your books you know like I've never I for me that I think

00:30:11.600 it's been a positive thing um yeah but she pointed out that with fan fiction people already know the

00:30:19.080 characters and so you have instant buy-in like there are they already know their traits they

00:30:23.320 already know the role they play in the narrative so even if you're shifting to another world or

00:30:27.120 aging them up or whatever it is you have this kind of instant buy-in and she made this and i'm not

00:30:32.200 going to name check her because if people get angry i don't want to get angry at me you don't

00:30:35.300 get angry at her but she said this is also what the kind of tropification of fiction is doing

00:30:41.060 because instead of characters you have archetypes right so you're seeing a lot of the same pattern

00:30:46.300 even in the way that characters look in terms of heroines and heroes and so people find them

00:30:51.860 instantly recognizable and they instantly know oh this is enemies to lover oh this is second

00:30:55.980 chance romance i recognize this and so you get that instant buy-in right away yeah oh that's so

00:31:01.700 interesting well and also goes back to melodrama because one of the things with melodrama is you

00:31:05.520 have these incredibly legible and understandable characters it's almost like um commedia dell'arte

00:31:11.620 like yes you know the characters yes exactly um we were talking a couple months ago with

00:31:18.080 sarah mclean on the pod about why first books from romance writers are often so good and it's

00:31:24.820 because they're still really messy i okay i think it's also because like the id is alive

00:31:32.000 The thing that you – we always talk about this among writers, like finding your id and – or finding the buttons that get pushed that really draw you personally into a story.

00:31:45.020 Like what's your – what's the candy?

00:31:46.340 What's the sauce?

00:31:47.520 And I do believe – like I know I was writing from my id in Shadow and Bone.

00:31:54.620 And I think that you can really see that in a lot of first books.

00:31:59.060 Yeah.

00:31:59.220 And it was very powerful in Six of Crows, right? Because it was all the heist narratives I love. It's the man who only loves one woman and can't tell her. It's nerds with secret power.

00:32:14.020 I remember watching The Accountant, which is, if you care at all about autism, don't watch this movie.

00:32:19.080 It's wildly offensive.

00:32:20.440 However, I have watched that movie like 15 times.

00:32:23.580 I love it.

00:32:24.760 And I can point to exactly the moment I lock in because it has this long, drawn-out slog of her first act.

00:32:31.520 And then all of a sudden, this nerdy accountant who can't relate to anything but numbers,

00:32:37.380 who, you know, and Anna Kendrick later in the film,

00:32:41.880 all of a sudden an assassin is in front of him

00:32:44.740 and he whips off his belt

00:32:46.040 and he fights the assassin with the belt.

00:32:47.920 And I was like, I'm in.

00:32:49.160 Nerd with secret powers, that's my juice.

00:32:51.380 Like, I was like, I love it.

00:32:53.580 So when you can find those buttons and identify them,

00:32:56.720 they become almost like a secret weapon

00:32:58.300 in terms of making sure that you have

00:33:00.640 these kind of little bits of catnip

00:33:02.020 that keep you going in the long haul of writing a novel.

00:33:05.840 Totally.

00:33:06.100 And that is so alive in a first novel, too.

00:33:09.680 So alive, yeah.

00:33:10.880 And you're not thinking about sequels.

00:33:12.860 You're not thinking about an audience.

00:33:14.000 You're not thinking about any of those things.

00:33:16.280 And anything you can do to get back to that kind of heart, that messy heart, is, I think, a smart thing to do as an author.

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00:37:08.600 episode. So our next question is about an element of fantasy that a listener named Sam wants your

00:37:20.980 input on. So much female-targeted fantasy writing has sexual assault in it. Why do you think this

00:37:26.280 is? And as an author who has added this to your own writing, why? It seems strange to write

00:37:31.400 something that's triggering to a large percentage of the target market. Personally, I'd love to

00:37:36.440 read Ninth House, but I just find the sexual assault content too intense to read. Do you

00:37:41.800 have a point of view on people saying this is done for shock value and not always necessary

00:37:46.140 to the story? I think this is a question that has the answer in the question, which is it's

00:37:52.540 basically saying many women experience sexual assault. Why would you write about it? I write

00:37:58.100 about it because many women experience sexual assault. And I don't see people asking authors

00:38:03.940 like Stephen King or Joe Abercrombie about it. 0.85

00:38:07.040 And yes, you could say it's female targeted,

00:38:09.940 but I'm putting big quotes around that

00:38:11.860 because we don't get to decide

00:38:14.100 who reads our books and likes them.

00:38:16.420 And men are more likely to,

00:38:18.280 first of all, men read less than women.

00:38:20.200 They buy less books.

00:38:21.240 We know that reading drops off for boys

00:38:24.440 around the middle grade years,

00:38:26.500 and they often don't come back from that,

00:38:28.400 particularly with fiction. 1.00

00:38:30.340 But certainly we know women 0.89

00:38:32.100 are reading Stephen King's books.

00:38:33.320 they're reading joe abercrombie's books um so i think it really comes down to it's less about

00:38:38.700 the audience than it is about the author yeah i also like you've talked about before about how

00:38:44.020 and it's not as neat as even like describing it this way makes it sound but like

00:38:50.100 there's disempowerment and then there's a way to re-empower like how does someone

00:38:55.860 figure out where their source of power is i mean i guess i'm i'm still parsing this because

00:39:03.240 Because even the idea of, she said, adding it to your story.

00:39:07.900 Oh, yeah, adding, that's interesting.

00:39:09.520 It's an interesting word choice, right?

00:39:11.340 It is.

00:39:12.000 It is.

00:39:12.580 And I think I don't add it.

00:39:15.460 So when we say shock value, right, this is a derisive term.

00:39:20.040 This is suggesting that this element of the story, this element of the character's experience is somehow unnecessary to the plot.

00:39:30.340 It's superfluous and it's just in there to, to disturb, disgust, repel, shock the reader.

00:39:37.360 And I don't think that my books are like that.

00:39:40.420 I think that, um, they are, that the experiences these characters have are fundamental to who

00:39:46.200 they are and how they operate in the world and, and sometimes the vengeance they seek

00:39:50.120 in the world.

00:39:51.180 But it's also that, um, I do want to shock you, you know, I do want to disturb you.

00:39:59.540 I don't want you to read about an assault and simply think, oh, that happened.

00:40:04.320 And I think that we put such an emphasis on comfort now.

00:40:13.040 And I will never go after somebody for their reading habits.

00:40:17.680 You read what you want to read.

00:40:19.280 Thank goodness you're reading it all in a world of fractioned attention spans.

00:40:24.360 but for me as a reader and as an author i'm not interested in in always sinking into a warm bath

00:40:32.320 i want the experience of jumping into the mountain lake i want to be shocked i want to be surprised

00:40:37.500 i want to find the unexpected and if sometimes that disturbs me um i i call that a plus so

00:40:46.540 So, yeah, and I also feel like if you are, if you really are, I'm being so careful around

00:40:53.980 this, but I'm just going to say it, like there's a temptation in me to say, you know, so many

00:40:57.560 women experience sexual assault.

00:40:58.860 I too have experienced sexual assault, but the reality is I'm pretty tired of particularly

00:41:04.360 women authors being called upon to use their trauma or their experiences in the world or

00:41:11.060 their identity as some kind of calling card.

00:41:14.160 we should be able to write what we want you should be able to read what you want and and if you never

00:41:20.960 want to be disturbed i don't think particularly ninth house would be the series for you but i

00:41:27.640 think you could point to things in six of crows or even shadow and bone or even the familiar and say

00:41:32.880 you know the the familiar is set in inquisition era spain there's a lot of disturbing things in

00:41:37.760 there because that's the way the world was also fighting ghosts like there sometimes I think about 0.98

00:41:46.320 like there are things that are inherent to this genre that are just like murder is fucking

00:41:50.780 disturbing it should be I mean I consume a lot of true crime like a lot of people do

00:41:56.440 yeah are we desensitized to it possibly so if you read a murder and it disturbs you well that's

00:42:01.560 maybe a good thing yeah they're bad yeah well and I also think that there are types of like

00:42:07.160 sometimes I want to jump into the mountain lake that is part of the reason I read right is to

00:42:13.520 feel things and some of those things are good and some of them are bad some of them are disgust

00:42:18.020 like when people talk about like I can't read a book where I don't like the protagonist sure and

00:42:23.320 then sometimes you want to read a book and you want it to be a warm blanket that makes you feel

00:42:27.500 nothing i have never think and i think in part thanks to the way my mom supported my reading

00:42:34.740 habits it was as long as you're reading and i don't care what you're reading yeah and so there

00:42:39.500 was no dividing line between literary or worthwhile fiction and genre fiction or you know and i read

00:42:46.600 across everything i read when i go on vacation i usually pick um a mystery i love a cozy mystery

00:42:52.660 You know, I'll pick the Thursday club murders or I, that's, that's what I want to read on

00:42:58.220 the beach or I'll pick nonfiction.

00:43:00.260 Um, I'm not going to pick something very heavy because that's not where I want to go.

00:43:05.460 I won't even pick a thriller because I have enough adrenaline in my body as it is, but,

00:43:09.980 but that's not, you know, you, you pick and choose.

00:43:12.780 It's like, what are you in the mood for dinner for tonight?

00:43:14.400 And that is exactly the way books should operate. 0.90

00:43:16.880 I think I get tetchy when I think there's a kind of almost Victorian sensibility about like what should or should not be written or should or should not be on shelves or that women should not be exposed to.

00:43:28.220 And that that enters into an area that I don't feel entirely comfortable with because I do not, you know, Ninth House has been there was a lot of kerfuffle when Ninth House was released, not because it's so it's really not that out there compared to a lot of books.

00:43:41.820 But I think because I came out of YA, there was this sort of, you know, oh, a scandal.

00:43:49.320 And but it's been on the shelf since 2019.

00:43:53.400 And and I can you know, Six of Crows is probably my most popular book.

00:43:58.300 I don't think there's any question.

00:43:59.440 But Ninth House is a close second.

00:44:01.040 So that to me says that, um, despite or because of their experiences, um, a lot of women readers are, are finding that they like these books.

00:44:14.300 Okay. This is actually a great way to tee up our next question about YA and genre and content. This comes from Erin and I just really love it. It's, it's really interesting.

00:44:24.100 Growing up in the 90s, we had a lot of scary and dark entertainment.

00:44:28.380 Ren and Stimpy, Hocus Pocus, things like that.

00:44:31.600 Now that I have a daughter, it seems like danger or fear have been carefully stripped out of everything from books to movies, like Hocus Pocus 2.

00:44:41.320 Do you see YA as the avenue for introducing the full spectrum of human emotions?

00:44:46.520 How do your books play into that?

00:44:49.100 This is a great question.

00:44:50.560 I know.

00:44:51.000 This is so interesting.

00:44:52.720 I would just add to like Ren and Stimpy and Hocus Pocus, like, I don't know, there were 0.90

00:44:56.700 like, when you watch stuff on TV, like, you just watched random shit, right?

00:45:01.260 Like, I watched Unsolved Mysteries all the time, which was like, that was my exposure 0.98

00:45:05.380 to it.

00:45:06.020 I'm thinking of like, when I was in, like, junior high and high school, I guess also

00:45:10.260 YA was very different then.

00:45:11.840 It wasn't, I think a lot of middle schoolers were reading YA, and I think then you didn't

00:45:16.480 really transition to YA novels, you transitioned to adult.

00:45:19.400 So then I was reading Clive Barker and Stephen King and Robin Hobb and, you know, I saw Hellraiser

00:45:25.020 and then I had to read Hellraiser.

00:45:26.900 I became a Clive Barker addict after that.

00:45:30.460 So I think that, first of all, I think you can actually point to middle grade first.

00:45:37.180 What about Goosebumps?

00:45:38.560 Yes.

00:45:38.980 Think about how popular Goosebumps still is because it's a little spooky, a little scary

00:45:43.760 for me.

00:45:44.300 One of my favorite books growing up was Bunnicula by James Howe, which is about a vampire bunny.

00:45:49.800 And I wrote to him as a kid.

00:45:52.380 We had to write to an author and he wrote back to me.

00:45:54.540 And it was truly magical.

00:45:57.300 I still have, it was written on this kind of onion skin paper.

00:46:00.180 And I still have the letter. 0.90

00:46:02.300 But I think we're drawn to those things at a very young age because there you can meet the monsters.

00:46:10.500 And you can both meet the monster and best the monster.

00:46:14.300 you can question the monstrous things inside you, which is what Frankenstein is all about,

00:46:20.780 what Dracula is all about. And I think it's important to remember that this is not just

00:46:26.700 a modern invention. This is across cultures. We've always had folk tales, fairy tales, legends,

00:46:33.800 and religious tales, parables, that really draw on these deep primal fears. One of the most

00:46:41.260 interesting things I discovered when I was reading Language of Thorns and researching

00:46:44.460 folk and fairy tales was you see the wicked stepmother, not just in Grimm's fairy tales,

00:46:48.900 but across cultures, there are wicked stepmothers. And the reason for this is because so many women 1.00

00:46:55.920 died in childbirth. And so you often had other women raising those kids. And these were cautionary 0.95

00:47:02.240 tales about what could happen if you mistreated these children or if you married the wrong woman.

00:47:08.420 And so we have to remember that our need for fear and our fear of the dark and all of these monsters that really operate as metaphors, they've been with us for a long time.

00:47:19.940 And to try to eliminate them is actually to do a disservice to kids who need them growing up.

00:47:25.820 That doesn't mean you have to throw things at kids at an age when they're not ready for it.

00:47:29.300 Then that's a different kind of disservice.

00:47:31.500 But the spooky and the scary, there's a reason kids love Halloween, and it isn't just candy.

00:47:35.840 like to to put on a to be a monster for a little while to be the scary one in the world in a world

00:47:42.200 that is pretty scary is so empowering and as far as so i think that gamut of emotions exists in

00:47:48.400 picture books it exists in middle grade books it exists in ya books and of course it exists in adult

00:47:52.980 books um and i've always been somebody who found those things delicious you know who who loved the

00:47:59.080 haunted mansion at disneyland who um who who wanted to to meet the monster and and see if

00:48:04.820 she could best it or befriend it yeah no and i think you know sometimes in these tales like

00:48:09.400 there is this remedy at the end right that like everything's okay like you touch darkness and the

00:48:15.340 light comes and then you're all right um but then sometimes too like i'm thinking about different

00:48:19.860 like i loved witch of blackbird pond or yes yes um that was a big influence on nikolai on my

00:48:27.880 private to your character i could totally see that um but like you know when you don't feel

00:48:35.340 like you fit in and there are so many books and fairy tales and folk tales about women whether

00:48:42.920 they're witches or crones or like outsiders right and so there's a there's an opportunity for 1.00

00:48:47.940 identification and like celebration even if that like unruly woman has to be shut down at some 0.85

00:48:55.100 point in the narrative like you know I all the time I'm like I my my mind stops at two-thirds

00:49:00.120 of the way through that book right like I don't whatever happens in the last there's like whatever

00:49:04.940 like everyone's fine everyone's fine and like Ursula's great like she's just having a really

00:49:13.600 good time at the bottom of the sea um but even just having those those moments for for identification

00:49:19.280 And, you know, the thing that always gets me about these conversations about YA is, like, you have to trust your kids to kind of figure out what they like.

00:49:30.180 Does this make sense?

00:49:31.280 Like, you're not going to, like, sometimes you shut down when something doesn't make sense to you and you stop reading the book.

00:49:37.680 I think, I mean, there's been plenty of conversation and study around this, but books are so different from film or television.

00:49:45.180 Yes. The way we parse visual inputs versus reading is so different. So if you read about

00:49:52.780 a car accident, that is wildly different than seeing the accident happen. Okay. We understand

00:49:57.900 that. If you are watching a film about something scary, you, and something surprises you that you

00:50:05.960 didn't, I thought I was going into one thing and then I got another thing. This happened to me when

00:50:09.240 I went to the movies and there was like a trailer for the nun or something. And I was like, I did

00:50:12.320 not come here for horror. This is not a Wendy's. So I was like, so there's an important distinction

00:50:19.960 there because when kids encounter things in books and when adults encounter things in books that

00:50:24.820 they're like, Ooh, not my thing. They close the book and then they're done. Whereas I think with

00:50:31.680 film and television that can really stick with you in a different way. And it, and we, and our

00:50:35.400 brains record those memories differently as well um yes that's such a good point yeah but i'll also

00:50:42.220 say this oh sorry go ahead i was gonna say like there's stuff that you read that doesn't make

00:50:47.120 sense and that's when we say like that went totally over my head and like yeah that can happen in

00:50:53.260 movies too like in wayne's world like half the jokes when i first saw that movie when i was in

00:50:56.900 seventh grade like i didn't understand like what ribbed for her pleasure meant in any capacity

00:51:01.540 but also just like so many descriptions of sex and like and you also like because you don't have

00:51:07.320 modeling necessarily of it like the way that it appears in your mind is just like these people

00:51:12.720 are having sex does that make sense yes I mean look I read I again I read everything on my

00:51:18.680 parents shelves yeah I read wildly disturbing things you know I'm thinking again about Ken

00:51:25.180 Follett and these books you know and and the kind of prurience that's in Sidney Sheldon or Jackie

00:51:30.500 Collins and I was okay. But in part that's because I had parents who were readers. Okay. And I was

00:51:38.840 also reading a lot of other stuff. So I'm learning the skills to, to hold different ideas in my head

00:51:46.440 at the same time. I'm learning about, you know, one book is much more dangerous than a hundred

00:51:52.400 books. And the more you're reading, the more you're talking about those things with your parents,

00:51:58.480 with your friends, those are valuable experiences. I always say at my events,

00:52:05.300 I don't believe in harmful books. I don't believe in dangerous books. And invariably,

00:52:09.500 there's somebody who's like, what about Mein Kampf? I'm like, that book, Germany banned that

00:52:15.180 book for years. Did that stop people from being anti-Semites or Nazis? It sure didn't. And it was

00:52:21.580 available in other places on the internet and so forth. You cannot, it's not the book that's

00:52:27.000 dangerous. It's the inability to talk about the book or parse the ideas in the book that are

00:52:31.800 dangerous. And I find it somewhat hypocritical because I saw a lot of talk within the book

00:52:38.260 community for years about how dangerous and harmful books were. Well, guess what? Now that's

00:52:42.300 the language that book banners are using. So I think our concern needs to lie with the 0.82

00:52:48.420 conversations that we're having around material and how much we're paying attention to what kids

00:52:53.560 are consuming and if your greatest concern is what your child is reading in the library you're

00:52:58.620 a lucky person because what they're seeing online every single day is so much more damaging yeah no

00:53:07.680 I think about too like when people are scared of let's say like just for an example like they're

00:53:13.000 scared of their kids getting their hands on ACOTAR I'm like are you actually scared of that because

00:53:17.420 most of the time the desire for that particular level of book does not come along until a little

00:53:22.640 bit later. But are you scared of that? Are you scared of the fact that you haven't had a

00:53:25.420 conversation with your daughter about sex or consent or pleasure? I feel for parents because

00:53:31.520 I feel like books are something people feel like they can control. Yeah. I see what my kid is

00:53:37.980 reading. I see what's on the shelf. It's such a good point. I do not blame parents for wanting

00:53:42.820 to seize control of one of the only things they can seize control over. Because unless you are

00:53:48.780 keeping your kid offline, which that's a whole other discussion, the things they are being

00:53:53.580 exposed to on social media, we know now the kind of how early young kids are seeing pornography

00:53:59.440 and really violent pornography, um, and how much kids are consuming of that, um, the kind of

00:54:07.260 violence that's available to people online. Like that to me is, and I'm not a parent, but it feels

00:54:14.420 like this unfightable, unwinnable battle. So I do have a lot of sympathy for parents who are like,

00:54:21.280 how do I get some kind of foothold on this and protect my child's childhood and the ability to

00:54:29.420 experience the world in positive ways without having my wiring switched up really early.

00:54:37.100 Yeah. Do you feel like we feel this way because we read so widely as teens that we're like,

00:54:42.160 we're fine let him read everything sometimes I feel like I like I I'm very permissive in the

00:54:49.180 way that I think about this because I was like this actually led me to figure out like a lot

00:54:53.640 of my moral code in a way that was independent of other people telling what it was what it was

00:54:59.300 do you know what I mean I don't look I I believe firmly that there are certain things that should

00:55:03.860 be on middle grade shelves in a library and certain things that should be YA shelves and

00:55:07.380 certain things that should be in adult shelves like I don't think that's a crazy or wild or

00:55:11.060 controversial idea, right? That's why we have librarians who specialize in those things.

00:55:15.020 Yeah.

00:55:15.200 So I think that that, and I think there's something very different about

00:55:18.320 being directed toward a book, right? Like I walk into the library, I see this on the shelf,

00:55:23.360 I pull it up versus, Ooh, I'm going to go read what's on my older sister's shelf. And I know

00:55:27.800 that I'm maybe I'm pushing the boundaries of this a little, or I know that this is maybe wasn't

00:55:32.400 intended for me. That's a totally different experience. Those are two different experiences

00:55:37.140 of access to a book. And I think the worst thing, though, that we can do is to make young people

00:55:45.580 afraid to talk about these things with us. The more we create taboo and shame around those

00:55:52.740 discussions, I think the worst position we'll be in. But again, I'm not a parent, and that's

00:55:59.120 partially because I think parenting is the hardest gig out there, the most thankless gig out there,

00:56:05.300 and it asks things of people

00:56:06.980 that are a level of unselfishness

00:56:09.500 that I don't think I'm capable of.

00:56:11.940 So only respect, only respect at the moment.

00:56:15.280 Same, Lee, same.

00:56:16.760 Okay, this question comes from a real fan

00:56:20.260 and it's gonna be just for paid subscribers.

00:56:22.760 So if you want intel on the next book

00:56:24.440 in the Ninth House Universe

00:56:25.520 or Lee's Rex for other fantasy novels,

00:56:29.300 go to patreon.com slash culture study

00:56:31.640 and become a paid subscriber.

00:56:33.760 If people wanna find more,

00:56:35.300 view on the internet, where can they find you? Um, I, the only social media platform I have

00:56:42.240 is Instagram. That's, um, L Bardugo, just the letter L, not like L Bardugo, like L Bardugo.

00:56:49.660 Uh, and so I'm not on Tik TOK and I am not on threads and I'm not on X or any of those things.

00:56:55.100 Um, and I also have a sub stack and I occasionally do some writing posts there. I also answer

00:57:00.820 questions. Um, and I do a little, I don't have the patience to make a podcast. So I do a little

00:57:07.100 recording called not a podcast where I work to my readers, um, cause I don't want to edit it or

00:57:12.860 make it polished. Um, so salute you guys for that. But, uh, yeah, that's where you can find me.

00:57:18.620 Well, we will direct people there on force. Thank you again for being here today. It has

00:57:22.860 been such a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

00:57:25.260 Thanks for listening to the culture study podcast to be sure to subscribe wherever you get your

00:57:33.380 podcast because we have so many great episodes in the works and I promise you don't want to miss

00:57:38.180 any of them. If you want to suggest a topic, ask a question about the culture that surrounds you

00:57:42.820 or submit a question for our subscriber only advice time segment, go to our Google forum

00:57:47.800 at tinyurl.com slash culture study pod, or check the show notes for a link. And if you want to

00:57:54.020 support the show and get bonus content, head to patreon.com slash culture study. It's five bucks

00:58:00.440 a month or $50 a year, and you'll get ad free episodes and exclusive advice time segment and

00:58:05.480 weekly discussion threads for each episode. The culture study podcast is produced by me and Helen

00:58:10.840 Peterson and melody Raul. Our music is by poddington bear. You can find me on Instagram

00:58:15.840 at and Helen Peterson melody at melodious 47 and the show at culture study pod.

00:58:24.020 Thank you.

Culture Study Podcast - November 12, 2025

A Very Smart Conversation About Fantasy (and Romance) with Leigh Bardugo

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