Episodes

If you haven’t stumbled across one of the many popular xianxia dramas on your favourite streaming service, we might have to ask if you’ve been living under a rock. Shows like The Untamed have become global sensations – and we have to admit that at least 2 out of 3 of us were swept up in its wake. Sharing […] The post Exploring Xianxia – with Mia Tsai first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

We all know that the original versions of fairy tales are so much darker than the sanitised ones that got handed down to us by the moralistic Victorians. Some authors choose to create a story in a fairytale setting that is as brutal as the original tales themselves. But what about a tale that tries […] The post Loving monsters – with Roshani Chokshi first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

Having started out writing a neighbourhood newspaper which she sold to buy candy and comics, Jane Yolen is now the author of over 400 books for children and adults. Jane has also worked as an editor, written poetry, and was described by Newsweek as “the Hans Christian Anderson of American children’s literature.” We are honoured […] The post A lifetime of writing – with Jane Yolen first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

Many of us grew up reading the myths and legends from Ancient Greece and Rome. We followed Herakles as he succeeded at one impossible task after another; we cringed when Orpheus turned round at the last moment so that Eurydice fled back into the underworld; we grinned when Odysseus outsmarted the cyclops, Polyphemus. But behind […] The post “But what if a woman wrote this?” – with Claire North first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

When the film The Blood on Satan’s Claw came out in 1971, reviewer Rod Cooper called it “a study in folk horror.” In 2003, when director Piers Haggard was talking to Fangoria magazine about his film, he also described it as a folk horror film. In the 1970s, the subgenre of folk horror was particularly popular among film makers. Known as “the unholy […] The post Folk horror – with Tori Bovalino first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

Twists and turns, red herrings and mistaken identities… are we talking about a mystery or a romance… or both? While mysteries keep us on our toes, propelling us towards uncovering the truth, romance narratives also play with the tension of the unknown. The difference is, we usually know the ‘who’ in a romance, just not […] The post Genre mash-ups: romance and crime with Freya Marske first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

We often talk about a woman in a man’s world, but what does this really mean – and is it accurate? What is a man’s world? A place where women are excluded from performing certain roles or jobs? Or are shackled to others? Is it to do with the balance of power? What power? Military, […] The post Myth, magic and mothers – with Shauna Lawless first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

Private detectives with a dark past and a chip on their shoulder, a mysterious woman with a hidden agenda, and bodies piling up around them. You know what we’re talking about: noir fiction. Although it is the films that are generally called noir, with their book counterparts being labelled ‘hardboiled crime’, we are going to […] The post Feminism and noir with CL Polk first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

Some of our favourite heroes are characters who might be deemed less than heroic by society. Smugglers, reckless hot-heads, gamblers and gangsters – everything that law and order should squash at the earliest opportunity. Yet in fiction we can’t help loving them. Rogues are the ones who do the dirty work so the hero doesn’t […] The post Rogues – with Ren Hutchings first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

While World War 2 saw greater opportunities for women on the home front while so many working-age men were away at war, there are many more examples of hard times bringing curbs on women’s rights. We only have to read the daily news to see it in action. But why is this? If you are fighting […] The post Oppression & survival – with Sunyi Dean first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

As you’ve hopefully worked out by now, we are big proponents of the need for diverse representation in speculative fiction. And while we are certainly seeing more LGBTQ+ relationships portrayed in the genres we love, there’s still a long way to go. But what about speculative fiction romance? Romance is a genre with very entrenched tropes […] The post No trope is an island – with Foz Meadows first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

These days, ‘punk’ is added to a whole host of different genres, sub-genres, and words never before used to indicate book genres before. But there was once only one kind of literary punk: cyberpunk. Pioneered in the 1980s by authors like Pat Cadigan, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling, cyberpunk imagined a dystopian world of advanced […] The post Cyberpunk with Kimberly Unger first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

Please be aware that we discuss some fairly heavy topics in this episode, including addiction, violence against children, and racially motivated violence. Also, less serious in nature but full disclosure: I reference Star Trek really early in this episode. I was proud of myself. Towards the end of this episode, we discuss some important issues […] The post Metaphor and social commentary with Saara El-Arifi first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

It’s easy to see why haunted houses are frightening – most of us live in a house and share a terror of what might happen if some unpleasant force took up residence there alongside us. Similarly, folk horror that is rooted in a particular place can challenge our sense of feeling safe within a community. […] The post The haunt – with Michelle Paver first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

The best horror takes place when we are at our most vulnerable. In our house. Under our bed. The best monsters are those that we trust because they have the greatest capacity for betrayal. With that in mind, it’s no wonder that families feature so strongly in horror fiction. In this episode, we are joined […] The post Families in horror with Priya Sharma first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

Have you ever wandered into a bookstore and found yourself baffled by the shelving of some books? Have you ever read a review that labeled a book written for adults as YA only to bemoan the amount of adult content? What do most of these erroneously shelved books have in common? They’re written by women. […] The post Women write YA? first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

Fairy tales are both timeless and personal. We see their themes and motifs repeated in stories spanning centuries. But while the characters and scenarios might be familiar, the morals change over time. The story’s message may differ depending on who is telling that story, and who is listening. In particular, women’s roles and sexuality have […] The post Curses and consent – with Heather Walter first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

When Madeline Miller published Circe, it heralded the start of a new wave of feminist retellings, in which writers revisited well-known classics in order to tell the stories of those excluded from the dominant narrative. Now the popularity of mythological retellings is at an all-time high and bookshops are flooded with tales of heroic women […] The post Rights, retellings and the Ramayana – with Vaishnavi Patel first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

Ursula K Le Guin is the very definition of a legend. So many of us found our way to speculative fiction through her works, while others only realised later that the tropes we so loved – considered cliched now – were fresh and new when Le Guin brought them to life. When we think of […] The post “Do not take me for granite” – with Amal El-Mohtar first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

The tale of Cinderella – or the Cat Cinderella, or Aschenputtel – is a story that is found in many cultures throughout the world. The extraneous elements may change – sometimes there’s a ball, sometimes not, there can be murder, a nut tree, a fairy godmother or the kindly spirit of a deceased mother – […] The post Deconstructing Cinderella – with JJA Harwood first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

It’s high fantasy. You know the drill: personalities are defined by race. Elves are pointy-eared snobs who are unbearably pretty, orcs are barely sentient lap dogs, dwarves love gold and mining… And this is how it’s been, for the most part, since Middle Earth. Not only are these narrow stereotypes incredibly problematic, but they are […] The post Unmapping fantasy with A. K. Larkwood first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

If you have been listening to our podcast for some time now, you will be well aware of our fascination with fairytales and how they continue to shape modern speculative fiction. But when we talk about fairytales, we are often thinking of a very narrow subset – those that are more familiar to English-speaking audiences… […] The post Slavic narratives with Gabriela Houston first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

For our first episode of 2022, we are going back to the 18th century, to look at the women who wielded power and the means they used to gain it. What challenges did they face? Are they remembered more or less favourably than their male contemporaries? And if, say, they had magic at their disposal, […] The post Women, history & power – with Kate Heartfield first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.

Fantasy – and indeed most fiction – often involves bitter rivalries. Fights over a kingdom or territory, long-standing feuds where people no longer even remember why it began… Such opposing forces are also a key ingredient in organised crime narratives, though they are rarer within fantasy fiction. When it comes to organised crime, our reference […] The post Beyond the Mafia – with Fonda Lee first appeared on Breaking the Glass Slipper.