30. Olivia Murphy on the politics of monster-fucking

Scholar, insomniac, and accidental romantasy expert Olivia Murphy joins us to talk about the wildly popular adults-only genre that blends Mills & Boon-style romance with Game of Thrones-style world-building, and explore its cultural significance.

Olivia is an expert on the popular novel of the long 18th century. In this conversation she draws a direct line from the forgotten, formulaic, novels that formed the trashy foundations on which Jane Austen's masterpieces were built to the dragon-shifter billionaires and tiger-men with unusual appendages dominating today's bestseller lists — and makes a compelling argument for why we should take them seriously.

Olivia Murphy is the author of Jane Austen, the Reader and is currently working on an edition of Pride and Prejudice for an American publisher. You can read her essay "Who Did This To You? Olivia Murphy on BookTok and the Politics of Monster Fucking" at the Sydney Review of Books.

Voices

Olivia Murphy is the author of Jane Austen, the Reader and is currently working on an edition of Pride and Prejudice for an American publisher.

Sarah Gilbert is a writer and producer based in Sydney, and the author of Unconventional Women: the story of the last Blessed Sacrament Sisters in Australia. She is executive producer at UTS Impact Studios.

Credits

This episode of Fully Lit was made on Gadigal land in Sydney.

Fully Lit podcast is brought to you by Impact Studios at UTS, the Sydney Review of Books, and the UTS Writing and Publishing Program, and is produced by Regina Botros.

Executive Producers: Sarah Gilbert and James Jiang.

Recorded and mixed by Regina Botros.

Further reading

'Who did this to you? Olivia Murphy on Booktok and the politics of monsterfucking', published by the Sydney Review of Books.