Leigh Bardugo on HELL BENT
\u201cAnd I always tend to start a book with a very popcorn sensibility, like,\xa0oh, well, this\u2019ll be fun, we're gonna have a little romp. And then to tell the story, honestly, you tend \u2014 especially when you're talking about things like institutional power and social influence and economic influence \u2014 you're going to bump up against some pretty heavy themes. And that certainly happened with Ninth\xa0House\xa0and again with\xa0Hell\xa0Bent.\u201d
No one does magic and mayhem and unforgettable characters like Leigh Bardugo. She takes readers behind the scenes of Hell\xa0Bent, her latest novel and the long-awaited follow-up to Ninth\xa0House, riffing on setting the series at Yale University, what she learned from writing movie trailers, the advice Holly Black gave her about screen adaptations, reading\xa0The Princess Bride, magic as a metaphor for power (and what happens to the metaphor when the power is real), how Louise Erdrich shifted the way Leigh felt about fiction, writing morally gray characters, vampires, what she\u2019s been reading, what\u2019s next for her (hint: character-driven standalone) and much more in a laughter-filled conversation with guest host Kat Sarfas.
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Featured Books:
Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
That Self-Same Metal by Brittany N. Williams
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This episode of Poured Over was produced and hosted by Kat Sarfas and mixed by Harry Liang. Follow us here for new episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays).