P. Djèlí Clark on Why He Writes

Caitlin Starling’s novella The Oblivion Bride (Neon Hemlock, 2025) follows Lorelei, an obscure member of the wealthy Steddart family, who suddenly finds herself sole heir after her family begins to fall, relentlessly, to a mysterious curse. In a last-ditch effort to save her family, Lorelei’s uncle marries her off to Nephele Corisande, the city state’s best War Alchemist, an intimidating soldier who is also Lorelei’s best chance at survival. But what begins as a marriage of convenience, quickly becomes something much more. In this interview, Starling describes the influences of horror and fanfiction on her new romance novella. She discusses the roles of aesthetic, magic, and technology in designing the world and plot of her fantasy mystery. We also chat about arranged marriage tropes and the role of class and power in relationships. The Oblivion Bride is an engaging and moving story and it was so much fun discussing it with the author. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/fantasy

With this dry observance Peter Darbyshire introduces us to Cross, a man who has lived thousands of years, though he’d prefer not to have, and who is now hunting angels in a Barcelona filled with tourists, phone cameras and deep mystery. The Mona Lisa Sacrifice (Poplar Press, 2024) is a layered supernatural thriller, filled with history, magic and beloved characters. When an angel promises to deliver Judas, a forgotten god of a forgotten people, to Cross for revenge if he can find the real Mona Lisa, a cascading set of mysteries involving a sisterhood of gorgons, Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Morgana le Fay and renegade angels is set in motion. Everything hangs in the balance. Even the fate of the world. This compulsively readable novel is the first in The Cross series and follows the reluctant hero Cross across time as he battles renegade angels trying to start a new holy war on Earth, hunts down a deadly ghost that is haunting Hamlet productions and assembles a crew of Atlanteans, pirates, vampires and the damned to stop Noah from ending the world. It’s a wild romp through history and literary culture, with a cast of characters that includes a band of very mischievous faerie, literary characters such as Alice from the Wonderland tales and a modern-day Frankenstein’s creature, an enigmatic Christopher Marlowe, gorgons, and much more. More about Peter Darbyshire: Often referred to as Canada’s Neil Gaiman, Peter Darbyshire is the author of six books and more stories than he can remember. He lives near Vancouver, British Columbia, where he spends his time writing, raising children and playing D&D with other writers. It’s a good life. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/fantasy

Robert Penner’s best-selling novel, The Dark King Swallows the World (Radiant Press, October 2024) is a phenomenal genre-bending read. A coming-of-age, historical fiction, and fantasy novel that simultaneously engages with and dismantles the cliches of its many genres, The Dark King Swallows the World is a totally unique and totally fresh story that is both engaging and emotional. Most of all, given the surreal events south of the border, Robert’s book—which is about a dark king brainwashing adults—feels uncannily portent. Isolated and friendless in World War II Cornwall, Nora, a precocious American adolescent, loses her younger half-brother in a car crash. Overwhelmed by grief Nora’s mother becomes involved with Olaf Winter, the self-professed necromancer Nora comes to believe is responsible for the accident. Desperate to win back her mother’s love from the nefarious Mr. Winter, Nora is plunged into a world of faeries, giants, and homunculi. Ultimately, she travels to the land of the dead, where she confronts the dark king who rules that realm, all in an attempt to win back her half-brother, and help heal her mother’s broken heart. More about Robert Penner: Robert G Penner lives and works in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He is the author of Strange Labour, one of Publishers Weekly‘s Best Science Fiction Books of 2020. He has published numerous short stories in a wide range of speculative and literary journals under both his name and various pseudonyms. He was also the founding editor of the online science fiction zine Big Echo. About Hollay Ghadery: Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/fantasy

Ivan Kreilkamp, Indiana University English professor and no stranger to Recall This Book, is the author of two books on Victorian literature and one about Jennifer Egan. For this episode of Recall This Story, Ivan reads Sylvia Townsend Warner's "Foxcastle.” It was first published in The New Yorker in 1975 and became the final story in her final book, Kingdoms of Elfin. Before diving into the story itself, Ivan and John marvel at STW's weird greatness--and great weirdness. Like Hilary Mantel, she is drawn to the deep strangeness of other people. Prompted by John to think about these fairy stories as posthuman, Ivan notes the "dehumanization ceremonies" fairies perform on stolen changelings. John builds on the idea by bringing up the rise (in the 1960's) of alien abduction narratives. Do they form an invisible subtext to the abduction that begins the story? David Trotter's "Posthuman? Animal Corpses, Aeroplanes and Very High Frequencies in the Work of Valentine Ackland and Sylvia Townsend Warner" explores Warner’s taste for non-human perspectives in e.g. The Cat's Cradle Book. Warner's own line on her stories--"bother the human heart, I’m tired of the human heart"--signals to Ivan her knowledge that the animals we share the world with see things quite differently: his own cat, he suspects, might let him die without too much emotion. John respects Charles Foster's Being a Beast for his decision to live like a badger (worm-eating and all) rather than just imagining it. Literature cited: Ivan has a piece in praise of STW’s 1926 Lolly Willowes. John and Ivan also revere Mr Fortune's Maggot (1927), The Corner That Held Them (1948) and The Flint Anchor (1954). When the two compare STW to Hilary Mantel they are thinking of historical fiction (Wolf Hall especially) as well as her biting novel of the Thatcher era, Beyond Black. Donna Haraway's A Cyborg Manifesto (1985) comes up in the posthumanism discussion. Randall Jarrell, "The Sick Child" ("all that I've never thought of--think of me!") Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/fantasy

P. Djèlí Clark is the author of acclaimed and award-winning speculative fiction, including the much-loved Dead Djinn universe books, Ring Shout, and his most recent, The Dead Cat Tail Assassins. We speak with him about why he writes, how he sees speculative fiction as a genre, whether we can expect to see more Dead Djinn books, the origins of his acclaimed novella Ring Shout, his new book The Dead Cat Tail Assassins (Tordotcom, 2024), and much more. For our conversation about the author’s academic work in history, see our previous episode: “Dexter Gabriel: Slavery and Film, Creativity and Academia, and Is Slavery a Good Metaphor for AI?” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/fantasy

The 13 essays collected in Cities and Strongholds of Middle-earth: Essays on the Habitations of Tolkien's Legendarium (Mythopoeic Press, 2024) foreground processes of making and constructing Arda -- either within the Secondary world or for readers/viewers -- and thus continually assert that the habitations form a vital part of the tales within that world. Because they assume a complex arrangement complete with social, familial, artistic, and political relations, cities and strongholds often define their inhabitants as crafting boundaries between themselves and the outside, the visitor, and the unknown. These essays reveal that all cities and strongholds of the legendarium function as makers of meaning, containers of relations, outposts of history, and evocations of the Past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/fantasy

Premee Mohamed’s novel The Siege of Burning Grass (Solaris, 2024) is set during an ongoing war between two empires: Varkal and Med’ariz and follows Alefret, a founder of Varkal’s pacifist resistance who has been arrested and imprisoned by his own country. When the opportunity for freedom presents itself, Alefret must decide how willing he is to collaborate with his government’s war effort and how much he is willing to sacrifice to remain committed to his own ideals. In this interview, Mohamed describes the long history of violent responses to pacifist movements and some of the influences that went into writing a war novel. She discusses the relationship between education and war, the role of community in forming political movements, and the strengths of speculative fiction as a genre. We also chat about medical experimentation, wartime propaganda and cool science fiction technology.  The Siege of Burning Grass is a grounded and empathetic novel about the cruelties of war. It was a great joy to discuss it with the author. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/fantasy

Approaching translations of Tolkien's works as stories in their own right, Reading Tolkien in Chinese: Religion, Fantasy and Translation (Bloomsbury, 2024) reads multiple Chinese translations of Tolkien's writing to uncover the new and unique perspectives that enrich the meaning of the original texts. Exploring translations of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin and The Unfinished Tales, Dr. Eric Reinders reveals the mechanics of meaning by literally back-translating the Chinese into English to dig into the conceptual common grounds shared by religion, fantasy and translation, namely the suspension of disbelief, and questions of truth - literal, allegorical and existential. With coverage of themes such as gods and heathens, elves and 'Men', race, mortality and immortality, fate and doom, and language, Dr. Reinder's journey to Chinese Middle-earth and back again drastically alters views on Tolkien's work where even basic genre classification surrounding fantasy literature look different through the lens of Chinese literary expectations. Invoking scholarship in Tolkien studies, fantasy theory and religious and translations studies, this is an ambitious exercises in comparative imagination across cultures that suspends the prejudiced hierarchy of originals over translations. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/fantasy

Dana Elmendorf’s novel In The Hour of Crows (Mira Books, 2024) takes place in small town Appalachia and follows Weatherly Opal Wilder, a young woman with the ability to talk death out of the dying. Our story begins shortly after the death of her cousin, Adaire, as Weatherly struggles to find justice for her cousin and to navigate small town politics in a place where her family is treated with increasing distrust. In this interview, Elmendorf describes the evolution of her novel from a romance to a murder mystery and the role that death and grief play in the story. She discusses Appalachian folk magic, abusive family structures, and shapeshifting crows. We also talk about poverty and rural healthcare systems, and the intermingling of the interpersonal and supernatural in contemporary fantasy. In the Hour of Crows is an empathetic, dream-like book and it was so much fun discussing it with the author. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/fantasy

Award winning author and short fiction writer, C. J. Spataro's debut novel, More Strange Than True (Sagging Meniscus Press, 2024) takes us in to a world of faeries and what happens when wishes do come true. After an epically shitty day, Jewell Jamieson unknowingly eats a magic-spiked meal and happens also to make a certain wish-and that's why she awakes the next morning to discover her beloved dog Oberon has been transformed into a beautiful naked man in her bed. Conflict ensues when Titania, the impulsive Queen of the Faeries, decides she wants Oberon for herself. Is Oberon simply a man who used to be a dog, or is he somehow something more? When Jewell discovers the answer, she will be faced with a devastating choice. Will she choose to save the man she's grown to love by giving him up, or will she honor his wishes and watch him die? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/fantasy