YA Megastar Leigh Bardugo Pens Her First Adult Fantasy

Goodreads: You've mentioned that the story of Ninth House has been haunting you since you first set foot in New Haven. Can you describe that first inkling?

Leigh Bardugo: You have to remember I grew up in a little dump of an apartment in the San Fernando Valley. So going to Yale really did feel like I'd walked through the wardrobe to someplace magical. Everything was stone walls and gothic arches and snow, and I was primed to see mystery everywhere.

I remember walking home from the post office and looking up from the letter I was reading to realize I was standing in front of a mausoleum roughly the size of an apartment building. It had no windows, and it was surrounded by a black fence crawling with wrought-iron snakes. How could I not fall in love?

That building turned out to be the "tomb" or clubhouse of Book and Snake, one of the oldest secret societies at Yale, and I think that may be where the idea for Ninth House began: What if Yale's secret societies weren't just blue-blood drinking clubs but repositories of arcane magic?

GR: Now more than 20 years later, you're bringing that story to life. What made you feel like it was finally the right time?

LB: I pitched this idea to my agent the first time we spoke, and I'd bring it up every few years. But there really wasn’t any time to pause and dig into something new. I had my head down, trying to deliver a new book every year, building the Grishaverse.

Then after touring for Six of Crows, I took a couple of weeks and just let myself sink into Ninth House. It wasn't so much that the right time magically arrived, as I just had to grab the moment and say, "OK, we're doing this."

GR: You've also been very candid about Ninth House being an adult fantasy novel. What influenced that direction, and how was your approach to this novel different from your young adult books?

LB: I knew very early on that this was not a story that belonged in young adult, not the way I wanted to tell it. I think readers who follow me to Ninth House are going to find familiar threads of dark humor and found family. And, of course, there's a deep element of wish fulfillment that goes along with writing about magic at a place like Yale.

But writing about an institution like Yale means exploring the power that operates in that world honestly, and that means reckoning with privilege and class and race. And writing about a young woman making her way as an undergraduate means that, yes, there should be poetry and tea with professors and beautiful libraries, but for me it also meant acknowledging the realities of gender and harassment and assault.

GR: What was it like writing a dark fantasy set at your alma mater? We imagine there was a lot of source material to draw from!

LB: Plenty. But it wasn't just Yale that inspired me; it was New Haven, too. I'm embarrassed to say how little I knew about a place I lived in for four years. I absolutely let myself stay comfortable in my bubble.

But when I started digging into my research, the city just kept revealing itself in these surprising, strange ways. With the exception of Black Elm, every single structure I've described in Ninth House is real, and much of the history of New Haven is as well.

GR: Power is a subject that you've explored in many of your books. It's especially reflected through the occult secret societies at the center of Ninth House. What can you tell us about these sinister groups?

LB: The societies—excluding Lethe—are all very real, but obviously the magic they practice isn't. (Though I hope there will be moments when you wonder if it is.) I tied each society’s occult practices to some element of their existing history or lore.

Book and Snake's tomb is directly across from the gates to the Grove Street Cemetery, so of course they're necromancers. Manuscript has some extraordinarily successful actors and media personalities among its alumni, so it made sense to tie their magic to glamours and illusion. Wolf's Head are shape-shifters, of course, and so on. Magic is just another kind of power, so who has access to it is a big question in Ninth House.

GR: From Kaz Brekker to Genya Safin, your rich and nuanced characters continue to blow your fans' minds—and they have the fan art and literary tattoos to prove it! What's your advice for rendering such wonderful characters that readers can feel passionate about?

LB: Stop worrying about likability and give your characters something to want. I think characters work best when we understand very deeply, and very specifically, what they want and what they're willing to do for it.

GR: Tell us about the process of rendering your main character, Alex Stern. What kind of magic (or maybe dark alchemy?) went into evolving her character through the final draft?

LB: I just never let myself shy away from Alex's rage. She's been cut off from her own culture, her family, religion, and I think I identify with the way that rootlessness has isolated her and left her vulnerable. She is a hungry character, a survivor to her very core, and that made her thrilling to write. How far will she go? What might she do next? She was so loud and so surprising.

GR: And a huge congratulations to the Grishaverse novels being adapted! What has the process been like for you so far?

LB: Pretty wild. There are moments you feel like you have a hand on the wheel, others when you feel like you're riding shotgun in someone else’s high-speed chase. But I just saw a camera test with two of the characters in costume for the first time, and it was so extraordinary.

GR: You've alluded that Ninth House carries undertones of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Magicians. Are there any other books you think readers should pick up to prepare themselves?

LB: I think there's an obvious debt to The Secret History in this book, but I think its tone and content are closer to what you might find in Stephen King or Gillian Flynn. I guess Ninth House is Harry Potter by way of Darren Aronofsky? Prepare as you see fit.

GR: And finally, what's next on the horizon for you? What upcoming projects are you currently most excited about?

LB: I'm currently working on the sequel to King of Scars, and then I’ll be diving into the sequel to Ninth House. But I have a couple of other projects brewing—something that might be a graphic novel and something else I'm not ready to talk about yet. Stories are shy. I don't like to drag them out into the light until they're ready.