148 episodes listed below
Feminist genre talk with real craft teeth.
Breaking the Glass Slipper treats speculative fiction as both pleasure reading and cultural argument. Its episodes move from dark academia, theatre as portal fantasy, zombies, and fairy-tale reimaginings to the craft questions underneath: what history can bend, what bodies mean, and whose stories get heard.
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Breaking the Glass Slipper is a speculative fiction show built around women, intersectional feminism, and the mechanics of genre storytelling. It covers science fiction, fantasy, and horror without treating those labels as sealed boxes. One week the subject might be a touring ballet company with an uneasy otherworld at its edges. Another might be a science-fiction cookery competition that turns food into a way of talking about race, class, and prejudice. The show has a clear literary spine. It cares about how stories are made, not just whether a book is fun. That means conversations often settle into craft: how much research belongs on the page, how to avoid an info dump, when a retelling becomes a reimagining, and how a murder mystery stays central inside a fantasy realm. It can be playful. It can also linger on uncomfortable material, including corpses, viruses, zombies, consent, obsession, and the social rules that shape who gets power in a story. Recent episodes show a broad range: dark academia, portal fantasy through theatre and ballet, far-future food, conventions, alternate histories, zombie fiction, fantasy crime, and Sleeping Beauty reimaginings. The rhythm is conversational rather than polished-flat. There are jokes, digressions, affectionate genre references, and practical questions for writers. The show is especially good at connecting familiar pleasures to deeper pressures. A school story becomes a discussion of death, malice, learning, and power. A ballet novel opens onto perfectionism, bodily discipline, and art as obsession. A convention episode turns from practical advice to community, expectation, awkwardness, and belonging. Breaking the Glass Slipper works best for readers who want genre enthusiasm with a critical lens. It also has real value for writers, especially those thinking about structure, research, myth, history, and representation. The show does not flatten speculative fiction into message-first commentary. Instead, it treats magic, monsters, spaceships, corpses, recipes, and fairy tales as tools for asking better questions about people.
Made for: For speculative fiction readers and writers who want lively conversations with substance. It especially suits listeners interested in feminist genre criticism, worldbuilding, retellings, horror, and the practical choices behind fiction.
What sets it apart: The show pairs accessible fandom energy with detailed craft and cultural analysis, moving easily from jokes about genre tropes to serious questions about death, prejudice, consent, history, and artistic pressure. Its strongest episodes make familiar fantasy, horror, and science-fiction premises feel newly examinable.
Podcast discussing women in science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Hosted by Megan Leigh, Charlotte Bond, and Lucy Hounsom. New episodes every other Thursday.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Author interviews make genre conventions legible through sharp questions about craft, power, and the choices behind speculative stories.
Breaking the Glass Slipper treats speculative fiction as both creative practice and cultural argument. Charlotte Bond, Lucy Hounsom, and Megan Lee bring authors into conversations about how genre works on the page, while keeping questions of gender, consent, and power firmly in…
Charlotte Bond asks whether Sleeping Beauty survives without the kiss; you get to decide where retelling ends.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Dark academia gets a sharper edge here, with corpses, consequence, and malicious spellwork.
This episode treats dark academia as a living set of questions rather than a fixed label. It moves from nostalgia, boredom, tension, and romance in school and university life to the practical matter of what learning means in a magical setting: how many classes a protagonist…
A ballet theatre, a semi-sentient train, and perfection pursued near an uneasy other world.
Theatre sits at the threshold in this discussion of The Apple and the Pearl, as a touring ballet company moves between a magic, semi-sentient train and a theatre with an uneasy other world pressing close.
A plainspoken convention chat with practical advice, personal memories, and a warm sense of community.
Katie's conversation with Charlotte Bond and Megan Lee stays grounded in practical advice and lived experience. It treats conventions less as spectacle than as craft: making contacts, being remembered for the right reasons, and using the dealer's room as a place to buy books.
A zombie discussion that moves from screen history into the craft of making the dead feel real.
It moves neatly from White Zombie and Bela Lugosi to George Romero's ghouls, then carries that line through Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, World War Z, and Zombieland.
A warm, useful look at how fantasy becomes a proper murder mystery.
Breaking the Glass Slipper uses a fantasy murder mystery as a clean way into the genre's moving parts. The hosts and Frances White sort through what makes a murder mystery feel distinct from a fantasy story that merely happens to include a killing, beginning with White's Voyage…
A focused conversation about romanticism, genre bias, and the trust behind a long-running writing partnership.
Breaking the Glass Slipper turns to romanticism with a clear eye for the genre's blurrier edges. It stays with the examples that make the label hard to pin down: secondary fantasy worlds with devilishly handsome princes, witches running cafes or bookshops, and the wide spread of…
Black history through culture, memory, and critique.
Serialized pulp radio drama: Red Panda battles android-army supervillain Captain Clockwork in 1930s Toronto.
Mike Muncer and a different guest dissect two horror films per episode, by subgenre.
Joe Lipsett and Trace Thurman find queer subtext in everything from Anaconda to The Mummy.
An interview with author Nicola Griffith about her novels set in 7th century Britain and the research behind historical authenticity.
A discussion on the history and evolution of zombies in film and literature, from early voodoo origins to modern societal breakdown metaphors.
An interview with author Katherine Arden about her World War One novel 'The Warm Hands of Ghosts' and her approach to writing war in historical fantasy.
Charlotte Bond, Lucy Hounsom, and Megan Lee ask Danielle Knight why dark academia keeps pulling readers toward school and university settings in Breaking the Glass Slipper's "In the halls of learning." Knight says she hated school, links the genre's lockdown boom to online classes, and describes A Rather Vengeful Accord as a two-book duology first published in November.
Breaking the Glass Slipper hosts Lucy Hounsom, Megan Lee, and Charlotte Bond interview author Rym Kechacha about her novel The Apple and the Pearl, a ballet-set portal fantasy that unfolds over a single day, November 2nd, All Souls' Day.
Authors discuss Lavanya Lakshminarayan's flavor-hacker series, blending a cookery show premise with themes of race, class, and prejudice in science fiction.
Breaking the Glass Slipper's "Conventions – with Katie Bruce" opens on the 2025 British Fantasy Award for Best Audio and the BFS's sense that the work matters.
An interview with author Sarah Brooks about the challenges and creative decisions in writing alternative history, blending fantasy with historical events.
Charlotte Bond and Lucy Hounsom open with White Zombie, George Romero, Resident Evil, 28 Days Later, and The Walking Dead to trace how zombies moved from voodoo reanimation to modern contagion.
Frances White calls Voyage of the Damned “a magical gay murder mystery cruise” set in Concordia.
Breaking the Glass Slipper hosts Charlotte Bond, Lucy Hounsom, and Megan Lee speak with Georgia Leighton about Spellbound, a feminist retelling of Sleeping Beauty.
Elizabeth Helen explain why they wrote the Beasts of the Briar series from Lord of the Rings fan fiction.
Jane Yolen discusses her prolific writing career, her new short story collection 'The Scarlet Circus', and shares wisdom for writers.
An interview with author Tori Bovalino about folk horror, her novel Not Good for Maidens, and the anthology The Gathering Dark.