Breaking the Glass Slipper: Women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror
A podcast that discusses women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Hosted by Megan Leigh, Charlotte Bond, and Lucy Hounsom, it explores the contributions and perspectives of women in these genres. Episodes feature conversations, analysis, and interviews about books, films, television, and other speculative fiction. New episodes are released every other Thursday.
Episodes
Aliens want PHDs too – with Annalee Newitz
Humans have always looked up at the stars and wondered if there is life beyond this world, and science fiction writers have spent years exploring this idea. In the earliest works, such as Kepler’s Somnium and Voltaire’s Micromégas, the aliens are giants, but humanoids. When we get to HG Wells’ The War of the Worlds, […]
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Is publishing broken?
We are seeing summer out with a bang. Yes it’s just us three – Megan, Lucy and Charlotte – talking about the changes we’ve observed in the publishing industry. It all began when Meg watched a video on YouTube about the downfall of rock music and she thought it sounded worryingly familiar… “I recently watched […]
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Folklore in the 21st century – with WyrdFolk Pod
We’re very excited because in this episode we get to talk to another podcast! Not just any podcast but the folklore world’s hottest up and coming show, WyrdFolk Pod! This show doesn’t just talk folklore and share folktales, it describes itself as a duelling podcast which invites its audience to listen to two stories written […]
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Ways of running the world – with K.L Kaine
For many fantasy writers, one of the great joys of writing a book is the opportunity it gives you to build a brand-new world. It can be based on the one we live in but with key differences. What if animals could talk? What if fairies were real? The possibilities are endless. However, no matter […]
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Creation, consent & control – with Bar Fridman-Tell
The beauty of myth is that it grows with us, that every generation brings its own perspective and interpretation to ancient stories to create something fresh, new and relevant to the concerns of a contemporary audience. Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman Tell was inspired by the Welsh myth of Blodeuwedd, in which a magician creates a […]
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In the halls of learning – with Danielle Knight
Dark academia is a genre that has proven pretty popular. We’ve all been to school and plenty of us have been to university, so is it the pull of nostalgia that attracts readers? Or were our school days so dull that we crave reimagining them with a healthy dose of magic? Perhaps the boiling pot […]
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Theatre as portal fantasy – with Rym Kechacha
In this month’s episode, we are taking you to the ballet, where stories are told through the medium of body and music. Just as this art can bring things to magical life, so too can it foster obsession in those who strive to achieve the perfect form. The Apple and the Pearl by Rym Kechacha […]
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Far future food – with Lavanya Lakshminarayan
The beauty of science fiction is that it can be pretty much anything. It can be people on spaceships exploring the stars. It can be settlers being stalked and killed by an alien monster. It can be about an alien trying to blend in with humans. It can be bold, scary, amusing, or heartbreaking. What […]
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Conventions – with Katie Bruce
Something a little bit different this month! Anyone who follows us on social media will be aware that we were completely thrilled and surprised to win the 2025 British Fantasy Award for Best Audio last month. In our somewhat unprepared acceptance speech, we said that sometimes it feels like no one out there is listening, […]
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Writing the magic – with Juliet E. Mckenna
So, this is a bit of an unusual episode. Normally, we get an author on to discuss their new book. But today we have three authors talking about a brand new non-fiction book they’re part of, and two of them are your hosts! The book in question is Writing the Magic, the fourth in an […]
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Alternate histories – with Sarah Brooks
For many writers, history can be both an inspiration and a source of plot. No one is going to call a fantasy writer out for “making it up”. With historical fiction, however, you have to be more careful – there are always a bunch of readers out there ready to spot anachronisms. But some writers […]
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Zombies are us – with Leigh Radford
Zombies first shambled onto our cinema screens in the 1932 film White Zombie staring Bela Lugosi. Early incarnations involved voodoo reanimation and lacked the whole brain-eating aspect. (There’s a really interesting article by Carnegie Mellon University that charts the early history of the zombie). But let us jump to what modern audiences consider a zombie. For that, […]
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Big deck energy – with Frances White
Part of a murder mystery’s charm is the narrative movement from chaos to order. The natural balance of justice is overturned and it’s up to ordinary people – rather than the law – to fix it. The uncovering of clues, red herrings, the many suspicious characters – all of these are essential to a good […]
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Unspinning Sleeping Beauty – with Georgia Leighton
Fairy tale retellings are always popular. Fairy tales are some of the first stories we learn as children. As well as being entertaining, they are instructive. Don’t stray from the path. Don’t trust wolves, or men. Fill your pockets with stones, not breadcrumbs. If you’re going to steal some herbs for your pregnant wife, be […]
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Why choose? – with Elizabeth Helen
It seems like these days you can’t go into a bookshop without seeing a display of romantasy books. It’s a broad term that applies to everything from secondary fantasy worlds with devilishly handsome princes to witches running cafes and falling for the leader of the coven. You can also get every flavour of spiciness under […]
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Pacifism and principles – with Maithree Wijesekara
We live our lives burdened with responsibilities, and expectations of how we should act. Those expectations are placed on us by society, by family, and even by ourselves. However, fiction allows us a space in which to examine what would happen if we stepped outside those expectations. What if, for example, we weren’t dutiful children […]
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Women on trial – with Grady Hendrix
We are back for 2025! We took a hiatus during the second half of 2024 due to our lives becoming that much busier. But loving what we have built with the show over the almost 10 years we’ve been running (!) we wanted to find a way to continue with BtGS. To that end, we’re […]
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Summer holidays!
We're on holiday! But don't worry, we will be back before you know it!
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Writing horror comics with Corissa Grant
We have a lot of authors on our podcast, talking about their books, what inspired them, how they’ve written them etc. Quite often they’ll get drawn into the TV series or films that inspired them [*coughs* Star Trek]. But a medium we don’t often touch upon is comics & graphic novels, even though some of […]
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The poetry of space – with Oliver K. Langmead
When we say the word “novel,” most of us think of a book written in prose, split into chapters and possibly parts. But every now and again, we come across novels that defy our expectations. Pratchett’s early work not only eschewed chapters – instead presenting the reader with continuous prose divided by section breaks – […]
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Secrets and killers with Kaaron Warren
A few decades ago, if you said the word “Gothic haunted house novel,” the phrase would very definitely have brought to mind something with a rambling Victorian mansion, tortured heroines, mad women in the attic, sombre men, and wailing ghosts. It probably wouldn’t have brought to mind a little old lady baking scones and conducting […]
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Keeping it short – with Gianni Washington
A short story isn’t just a novel in miniature form. It isn’t even a shortened novella. It is a creature of its own devising. There’s only time for a snapshot of reality, and in the space of a few thousand words, you have to be able to draw in a reader, make them feel for […]
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Secret societies & the occult – with S.T. Gibson
The literature of our past is littered with casual gender biases. You describe someone as a “witch” and the natural assumption is that they are female. But according to Diane Purkiss, while mostly women were accused in the English witch trials, in some of the Scandinavian countries, men were in the slight majority. In fact, […]
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The horror of space travel with SA Barnes
“In space, no one can hear you scream.” It’s an iconic tagline that can be applied to so many modern stories about space travel and exploration (except, perhaps, our beloved Star Trek). Obviously, space travel in real life can be incredibly perilous, but the perils of space in fiction have moved beyond the worry about […]
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Religion, tradition, and history in fantasy with Andrew Knighton
Religion has been part of our society for centuries. Is it any wonder then that it can make up a large part of our fiction – from CS Lewis’s allegorical Chronicles of Narnia series to Anna Smith Spark’s Empires of Dust trilogy and the Loki books by Joanne Harris. But with so many religions the […]
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Yes, we’re also authors – with Lucy and Charlotte
We have a bit of an unusual episode for you today! While it is amazing that we have so many authors who want to come on the show – we feel truly honoured – we thought it was about time we returned to talking among the three of us, like it was when we first […]
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Obsessional love and vengeance with S.E. Porter
Love can last a lifetime, but revenge is forever… Love is a common driving force for novels, and it comes in many forms. It could be the pursuit of true love, or the quest to turn unrequited love into a passionate relationship. Often, it can be the loss of love that spurs a hero or […]
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Ghosts have warm hands – with Katherine Arden
The title of this episode is taken from Will R. Bird’s memoir of World War 1, a title which also inspired that of Katherine Arden’s novel set amidst the horror of the Great War. When it comes to writing about war, past authors have glorified it with moments of pathos. Who can forget the stirring […]
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Beneath the skin of the earth – with Nicola Griffith
Welcome to our first episode of 2024. Yes, the title’s a quote from our incredible guest. As a podcast dedicated primarily to speculative fiction, we rarely find ourselves taking a deep dive into history. But the growth in popularity of both myths and retellings is bringing with it a new focus on historical periods, and […]
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Othering and exoticism in fantasy with Eliza Chan
Modern fantasy owes much to J.R.R. Tolkien, including his problematic colonialist views and othering of cultures and races different from his medieval European-inspired setting. Many authors since then have used ‘historical accuracy’ as a defence against a lack of diversity in their similarly inspired settings. But even if we gloss over the fact that this […]
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Community and isolation – with Jennifer Thorne
We love our folk horror. The genre has been growing in popularity these past years, and it’s not hard to see why. Writers take pastoral settings such as windswept hills or rugged sea coasts and imbue them with a sense of deep isolation. Throw in a community that seems at first utterly safe and then […]
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Romancing the necromancer – with Alice James
Welcome to our Halloween episode! Romance has always been big business and these days there are plenty of subgenres. Despite its popularity, however, some snobbery still exists, often dismissing romance as “women’s fiction.” But if romance is really so terrible, why does it sell so well? Are the female characters in these books still the […]
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The dark half of the year – with Lili Hayward
It’s October, so we’re officially allowed to talk about Christmas. Sure, we’ve got Halloween first, and that’s a celebration we should all be enthusiastic about, but take a look at what books are being pushed by bookstores, Amazon, and even supermarkets, and you’ll find that Christmas stories are starting to creep in. You could say […]
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The power of language – with Jelena Dunato and Ioanna Papadopoulou
We often take for granted the role language plays in communicating our favourite stories. And here in the west, there exists an unspoken expectation to be able to consume those favourite stories in English. The necessity and importance of translation is a given. Writers producing work in English but for whom English is their second […]
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“Something a little monstrous” – with Isabel Cañas
We’re honoured to have Isabel Cañas join us on the show as she talks us through not only her fabulous new novel, Vampires of El Norte, but also her experience of breaking into publishing as a Mexican-American writer and the pressure on marginalised creators to produce something “fresh”. Mentioned in this episode: Isabel Cañas is a […]
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The poison salon – with Rose Biggin
In the preface to Les Fleurs du mal, Baudelaire indicated that boredom is the truest suffering, andthis idea later became central to the fin de siècle movement, an era of decadence in which artificemasqueraded as, or was even elevated to the status of, art. The Belladonna Invitation by Rose Bigginis a Gothic exploration of the […]
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Medical hive minds – with Hiron Ennes
When it comes to science fiction – and particularly dystopian science fiction – doctors are either the saviours of humanity with their invaluable medical knowledge, or they are the villains, using a lack of rules to exploit the vulnerable for their own questionable ends. But why is that? Is it a case of power corrupts? […]
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Exploring Jewish folklore – with Ariel Kaplan
Folklore and fairy tales can sometimes be inextricably bound up with religion. In the Grimms’ own collection of fairy tales, the Devil turns up and so do angels. ‘The Peasant in Heaven’ as well as ‘The Devil and his Grandmother’ were included alongside more famous tales such as ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Rumpelstiltskin’. With the current appetite […]
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The singing bone – with Lucy Holland & Charlotte Bond
For this week’s episode, Lucy and Charlotte thought they’d take the opportunity to talk about something they have a passion for: folklore. In particular, the ballad of the Singing Bone, which is Aarne Thompson index number 780. To give it its full name, the Aarne Thompson Uther (shortened to ATU) index was created to try […]
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The AI apocalypse with Emma Mieko Candon
It’s a standard rule of writing that if you want your protagonist to look heroic and competent, you’ve got to get a powerful and menacing antagonist. In the past, writers have used AI as an overwhelming and hostile force, while others have chosen gods. But Emma Mieko Candon has taken the unusual step of pairing […]
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Politics and tropes in fantasy with Andrea Stewart
I went a little bit left-field with the introduction to this episode, but I was weirdly excited by the fact that there was a major event in politics on the day I’d planned to discuss politics on the podcast! So please just bear with me, I promise it is all related to speculative fiction! On […]
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Embracing rage in speculative fiction with Kritika H. Rao
In this episode, I am really excited to talk about a book I was invited to read last year. The premise drew me in immediately – the last of humanity fighting to exist above an inhospitable earth – the only thing keeping them safe is their city built and maintained by plants magically manipulated by […]
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The realities of colonialism – with C.L. Clark
Speculative fiction is no stranger to exploring issues of colonialism, particularly in science fiction, from first contact stories to wars over territories. While many such stories are extremely black and white, the realities of colonialism are far murkier. A colonial mindset shapes not just the colonised but also the coloniser, often in unexpected ways. It […]
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After the end – with Cassandra Khaw
Horror works best when it’s relatable. The best protagonists in a horror story are those that are just like us: they’re sensible, trying to scrape by, possibly raise families, and make the most of life. We empathise with people we understand. Cassandra Khaw is no stranger to the average Joe (or average Jane) as a […]
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Away with the fairies – with Heather Fawcett
Fairies and fairy stories have fascinated us for centuries. They have been present in British art and literature certainly from the 1600s, with the earliest mention being dated as the 13th century. But what if, in the early 1900s, the world was fully aware of and accepting of the existence of fairies? What if academics in Oxford […]
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The women of Arthurian legends with Juliet E. McKenna
The Arthurian legends are named for one man, but the tales associated with the legend involve an extensive cast: Merlin, Nimue, Guinevere, Lancelot, Uther, the Lady of the Lake, Ygraine, and many more. The women within the Arthurian legends have often been side-lined in favour of their more masculine counterparts, but they offer a far […]
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The myth of a fair society – with Lavanya Lakshminarayan
We all know the classic line from Animal Farm: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” As much as we might want, and strive for, a wholly equal world, it is an unlikely reality for humans. We are too flawed, too greedy, too competitive, too selfish. Speculative fiction has certainly […]
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Haunted houses – with Grady Hendrix
We typically feature female creators on this show who write cracking female or marginalised characters, but in this episode, we talk to author Grady Hendrix, an author adept at creating female protagonists both believable and relatable. From his first book, Horrorstör, to his most recent novel, How To Sell A Haunted House, he has placed […]
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Exploring Xianxia – with Mia Tsai
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 […]
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Loving monsters – with Roshani Chokshi
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 […]
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A lifetime of writing – with Jane Yolen
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 […]
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“But what if a woman wrote this?” – with Claire North
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 […]
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Folk horror – with Tori Bovalino
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 […]
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Genre mash-ups: romance and crime with Freya Marske
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 […]
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Myth, magic and mothers – with Shauna Lawless
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, […]
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Feminism and noir with CL Polk
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 […]
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Rogues – with Ren Hutchings
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 […]
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Oppression & survival – with Sunyi Dean
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 […]
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No trope is an island – with Foz Meadows
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 […]
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Cyberpunk with Kimberly Unger
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 […]
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Metaphor and social commentary with Saara El-Arifi
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 […]
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The haunt – with Michelle Paver
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. […]
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Families in horror with Priya Sharma
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 […]
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Women write YA?
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. […]
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Curses and consent – with Heather Walter
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 […]
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Rights, retellings and the Ramayana – with Vaishnavi Patel
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 […]
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“Do not take me for granite” – with Amal El-Mohtar
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 […]
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Deconstructing Cinderella – with JJA Harwood
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 – […]
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Unmapping fantasy with A. K. Larkwood
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 […]
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Slavic narratives with Gabriela Houston
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… […]
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Women, history & power – with Kate Heartfield
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, […]
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Beyond the Mafia – with Fonda Lee
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 […]
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Cli-fi and catastrophe
We are destroying our planet. The scientists agree, there is no denying that catastrophic climate change is imminent. And yet our leaders continue to pay lip service to the issue without taking real, impactful action. If things don’t change – drastically and soon – we won’t have a planet to call home. Speculative fiction writers […]
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Hopeful speculative fiction with Ryka Aoki
The incredible Ursula K. Le Guin won the National Book Foundation medal for distinguished contribution to American letters in 2014. In her much-shared speech, she noted that “hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and […]
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Body horror with Ellen Datlow
Your body is a temple – a saying that has been with us for centuries. The message: look after your body because you and it are going to be together for a long time. The body is in a symbiotic relationship with the soul: one cannot exist without the other. But what if one of […]
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“Perfect” women – with Cat Valente
The idea of perfection, the perfect being, is one of the oldest stories in the world. How that perfection might be tainted, or turn against the hand that made it, is something that has always intrigued writers of fiction. We can see this idea in stories as wide ranging as The Stepford Wives to Pygmalion […]
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Female friendships – with Alix E Harrow
Female friendships tend to take a back seat in our narratives, so that when they are given the space to exist, they exist almost solely to discuss a man. Virginia Woolf once commented that “all the great women of fiction were . . . not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in […]
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Power and agency in dystopian YA with Melissa Welliver
Coming of age stories have long been a staple within speculative fiction genres, but in the last decade, we have seen an explosion of popularity in what publishers and booksellers refer to as YA – young adult – literature. And within that bracket, nothing is more popular than dystopian YA. We live in an increasingly […]
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Reconciling our love of works by problematic creators
Recently, a number of prominent television and film creators, as well as authors, have either been outed for bad behaviour or made hateful public statements. Anyone who is a regular listener will know that we often refer to Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And they are not the only texts we mention that […]
The post Reconciling our love of works by problematic creators first appeared on
The mash-up: science fiction and cosmic horror with Ada Hoffmann
The history of humanity is arguably the history of us trying to explain everything around us. Both science and religion have developed as divergent threads of this goal, inextricably linked but often at odds with one another. Science fiction and cosmic horror also like to explore similar issues, so it feels natural that we are […]
The post The mash-up: science fiction and cosmic horror with Ada Ho
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