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Natalie Zina Walschots on good bosses and bad guys [encore]
05/27/2026
Natalie Zina Walschots on good bosses and bad guys [encore]
This week we’re bringing you a conversation Michael Tamblyn had in 2021 with Natalie Zina Walschots about her extremely fun novel called . It’s about a world where superheroes are out there saving the day in super ways, while villains, who are a lot like you and me, run organizations bent on taking over the world while also trying to keep scores up on Glassdoor. Natalie’s just released a sequel to Hench, and it’s called . [From 2021:] We learned about some of the fantastical worlds Natalie enjoyed exploring as a young reader "often for sheer escapism," as well as the writers she drew inspiration from while starting out as a writer herself, and as a lifelong student of supervillainy: Robert O'Brien's and High fantasy including , but also , , and "anything with a wizard holding an orb on the cover" or "a skeleton holding a sword" , , , and other writers "doing super weird things with language and the structural materiality of language..." "was the first book I read from the perspective of a supervillain." " is really important to me ... the relationship between Satan the adversary to the world informs the way I write villains." Neil Gaiman's , where "a character who's a villain in one context becomes the protagonist in another." by V E Schwab Erin Morgenstern's and various writings of for their "messed up fairy tale feel."
/episode/index/show/koboinconversation/id/41432105
