Breaking the Glass Slipper: Women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror

By Megan Leigh, Charlotte Bond, and Lucy Hounsom

What's Breaking the Glass Slipper: Women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror about?

Podcast discussing women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Hosted by Megan Leigh, Charlotte Bond, and Lucy Hounsom. New episodes every other Thursday.

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Breaking the Glass Slipper: Women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror episodes:

04.25.2024
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...
04.11.2024
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...
03.28.2024
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...
03.14.2024
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...
02.29.2024
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...
02.15.2024
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...
12.07.2023
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...
11.23.2023
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...
11.02.2023
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,...
10.05.2023
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...
09.21.2023
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...
09.07.2023
“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...
08.24.2023
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...
08.10.2023
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...
07.27.2023
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’...
07.13.2023
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...
06.29.2023
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...
06.15.2023
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...
06.01.2023
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...
05.18.2023
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...
05.04.2023
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...
04.20.2023
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...
04.06.2023
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...
03.23.2023
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...
03.09.2023
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,...
02.23.2023
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...
02.09.2023
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...
01.26.2023
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...
01.12.2023
“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...
12.15.2022
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...
12.01.2022
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...
11.17.2022
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...
11.03.2022
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...
10.20.2022
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...
08.04.2022
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...
07.21.2022
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...
07.07.2022
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...
06.23.2022
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...
06.09.2022
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...
05.26.2022
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...
05.12.2022
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?...
04.28.2022
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...
04.14.2022
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...
03.31.2022
“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 –...
03.17.2022
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,...
03.03.2022
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...
02.17.2022
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...
01.27.2022
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...
12.09.2021
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,...
11.25.2021
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 –...

What's Breaking the Glass Slipper: Women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Breaking the Glass Slipper: Women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror episodes:

The horror of space travel with SA Barnes

Religion, tradition, and history in fantasy with Andrew Knighton

Yes, we’re also authors – with Lucy and Charlotte

Obsessional love and vengeance with S.E. Porter

Ghosts have warm hands – with Katherine Arden

Beneath the skin of the earth – with Nicola Griffith

Othering and exoticism in fantasy with Eliza Chan

Community and isolation – with Jennifer Thorne

Romancing the necromancer – with Alice James

The dark half of the year – with Lili Hayward

The power of language – with Jelena Dunato and Ioanna Papadopoulou

“Something a little monstrous” – with Isabel Cañas

The poison salon – with Rose Biggin

Medical hive minds – with Hiron Ennes

Exploring Jewish folklore – with Ariel Kaplan

The singing bone – with Lucy Holland & Charlotte Bond

The AI apocalypse with Emma Mieko Candon

Politics and tropes in fantasy with Andrea Stewart

Embracing rage in speculative fiction with Kritika H. Rao

The realities of colonialism – with C.L. Clark

After the end – with Cassandra Khaw

Away with the fairies – with Heather Fawcett

The women of Arthurian legends with Juliet E. McKenna

The myth of a fair society – with Lavanya Lakshminarayan

Haunted houses – with Grady Hendrix

Exploring Xianxia – with Mia Tsai

Loving monsters – with Roshani Chokshi

A lifetime of writing – with Jane Yolen

“But what if a woman wrote this?” – with Claire North

Folk horror – with Tori Bovalino

Genre mash-ups: romance and crime with Freya Marske

Myth, magic and mothers – with Shauna Lawless

Feminism and noir with CL Polk

Rogues – with Ren Hutchings

Oppression & survival – with Sunyi Dean

No trope is an island – with Foz Meadows

Cyberpunk with Kimberly Unger

Metaphor and social commentary with Saara El-Arifi

The haunt – with Michelle Paver

Families in horror with Priya Sharma

Women write YA?

Curses and consent – with Heather Walter

Rights, retellings and the Ramayana – with Vaishnavi Patel

“Do not take me for granite” – with Amal El-Mohtar

Deconstructing Cinderella – with JJA Harwood

Unmapping fantasy with A. K. Larkwood

Slavic narratives with Gabriela Houston

Women, history & power – with Kate Heartfield

Beyond the Mafia – with Fonda Lee

Cli-fi and catastrophe