Wizards Vs. Lesbians

A queer sf review podcast about the emerging wizards vs. lesbians microgenre.

WHEN THEY BURNED THE BUTTERFLY 11/09/2025

WHEN THEY BURNED THE BUTTERFLY It's magical gang warfare in Singapore, circa 1972. All the politics, history and gender you could ask for but folded into a plot that moves at breakneck speed and never lets you lose interest. We really liked this one. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/38967805

RADCLIFFE HALL and BUT NOT TOO BOLD 10/26/2025

RADCLIFFE HALL and BUT NOT TOO BOLD We bring you a pair of novellas, both of which are about living in a big creepy house which is haunted by an ancient woman. They go on to have very different opinions about how cool that would be, even though the underlying metaphors are largely the same. You can read Radcliffe Hall here: https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/radcliffe-hall/ /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/38783530

BONUS: THE RAGPICKER 10/19/2025

BONUS: THE RAGPICKER Kerstin Hall of Asunder fame joins us to discuss a book about aging and the end of the world. (It turns out aging isn't the end of the world, but the end of the world isn't the end of the world either.) There's also a lot of stuff about the internet, autism and knowing the names of plants, but more importantly it's a beautiful little book that is absolutely not afraid to get weird with it. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/38634740

THE STARVING SAINTS 10/12/2025

THE STARVING SAINTS Cannibalism season continues on Wizards vs. Lesbians, as this one's a story about how all of us would probably eat some human meat the second things get difficult, and how on a metaphorical level we definitely already have. It's not without its problems but it does a good job of capturing how we all felt during lockdown and drawing a line between that feeling and our current predicament(s). /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/38553475

BUNNY 09/28/2025

BUNNY A novel about being in an MFA (but not necessarily an MFA novel) with all the horror that implies. What if your creative process involved doing unethical things to dumb animals, and what if you have a hard time separating your creative process from your sex life? /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/38381670

METAL FROM HEAVEN 09/14/2025

METAL FROM HEAVEN A book about messianic communism, and also about obsessive childhood love, and also about microplastics. Inspirations cited by the author include Disco Elysium and End of Evangelion. Hang onto your hats. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/38214950

AUNT TIGRESS 08/31/2025

AUNT TIGRESS Life is complicated for a Chinese-Canadian lesbian college kid with PTSD who is also half tiger - complicated enough, you would think, but complication invites complication, and soon she has to ask herself like questions like "is this the apocalypse" and "am I partially responsible for it." Those are pretty standard questions these days, admittedly, and that core of relatability is what keeps a rangy, stressful, fascinating book mostly on the rails. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/38035095

BONUS: KARLA'S CHOICE 08/24/2025

BONUS: KARLA'S CHOICE Arkady Martine joins us to discuss a new spy novel written by Nick Harkaway and starring a bunch of beloved characters created by his father, John le Carré. In doing this, Harkaway has set out what is essentially an impossible task for himself; how does he manage? /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/37938600

SHORT FICTION ROUNDUP #7 08/17/2025

SHORT FICTION ROUNDUP #7 Today we cover by Ursula Whitcher, by Lowry Poletti, and by Sarah Pinsker. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/37853335

BONUS: MIDDLEMARCH 08/10/2025

BONUS: MIDDLEMARCH Our classic literature correspondent Kat Weaver joins us for a look at George Eliot's masterpiece about small towns and bad marriages. We find some wizards in it. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/37751890

THE MEMBRANES 08/03/2025

THE MEMBRANES It's very easy to get caught up in the titular metaphor, here - this brief, gauzy cyberpunk novel, written in Taiwan in 1995 and only recently available in translation, peels itself back slowly, revealing layer upon layer, until one can almost see the whole genome of the next thirty years of queer speculative fiction, wrapped up tight inside its core. That being said, please pay particular attention to the content warnings. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/37652765

BONUS: THE COMMODORE (AUBREY/MATURIN #17) 07/27/2025

BONUS: THE COMMODORE (AUBREY/MATURIN #17) Our adventure correspondent Isaac Fellman joins us once again, this time to talk about Patrick O'Brien and the age of sail through the lens of the seventeenth book in the Aubrey/Maturin series. We chose to do it this way a) because we thought it would be funny and b) because this book features a small autistic girl healed through the power of Irishness, which opens an interesting line of inquiry about both the author and the project generally. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/37567255

THE INCANDESCENT 07/20/2025

THE INCANDESCENT What if the Scholomance was a British boarding school, and therefore had funding, prestige and a competent professional faculty that cared about its students? And what if we told the story from the point of view of the Director of Magic, an extremely sensible woman who has devoted herself to a life of public service? And then, finally, what if it turns out that none of that is enough? /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/37472180

BONUS: VOWS AND HONOR 07/13/2025

BONUS: VOWS AND HONOR At long last we contend with Mercedes Lackey. We are deep in the ancestry of books about girls with swords; so deep that they're not even gay for each other, even though they're married. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/37390290

THE MANOR OF DREAMS 07/07/2025

THE MANOR OF DREAMS The titular manor is lavishly, extravagantly haunted - there are layers upon layers of haunting, over a century's worth, and we get to peel them back one by one. Some of the haunting is inspired by Dream of the Red Chamber, which makes Alexis very happy. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/37301395

BONUS: THE CHATELAINE 06/29/2025

BONUS: THE CHATELAINE Heather Rose Jones joins us to discuss a delightfully strange book - hell is real, and it's a giant monster that lives underground, and the devil's wife tricked him and took his keys, so she's in charge of it, and she's trying to form a strategic alliance with the king of France, which sucks for you because you're Belgian. Also it's 1328. Fans of Wizards vs Lesbians may enjoy Heather's , for obvious reasons. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/37208525

A SWEET STING OF SALT 06/23/2025

A SWEET STING OF SALT This is a historical novel about life in a small fishing village in Nova Scotia in the 1830s, the options available to women at the time and what happens when a man takes an unwilling bride. In that capacity, it succeeds; as a fairy-tale deconstruction, which it's also trying to be, it doesn't. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/37111945

THE SAPLING CAGE 06/08/2025

THE SAPLING CAGE A young adult novel about a trans girl who wants to be a witch. Witches in this world are feminist/anarcho-primitivist forest mercenaries, though, which doesn't complicate matters for our hero but does for a reader trying to make sense of what's happening. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36906425

BONUS: PIRANESI 06/01/2025

BONUS: PIRANESI This one's about a guy who gets stuck in a labyrinth. Lee joins us to discuss why the guy is there and what, if anything, it all means. We all agree it's a very good book but past that point things get a little contentious. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36804585

LOTE 05/25/2025

LOTE A synaesthete vagabond who wants to live like the Bright Young People accidentally goes to grad school instead. It's like if Foucault's Pendulum was funny. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36702420

ASUNDER 05/11/2025

ASUNDER What if the dude who is possessing you is actually a nice guy? And what if you're the kind of gremlin who can only be fixed by a live-in boyfriend, and by "live-in" I mean in your actual brain? /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36521515

BONUS: FANGIRL 05/04/2025

BONUS: FANGIRL Masha du Toit joins us to discuss a book about going to college and writing fanficiton which turns out to be laser-targeted at one of our hosts. So what we end up with is a strange mixture of cultural history and personal pain, much like the book itself. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36424365

SHORT FICTION ROUNDUP # 6 - 2024 NEBULAS EDITION 04/27/2025

SHORT FICTION ROUNDUP # 6 - 2024 NEBULAS EDITION It's this again! In this episode we discuss the following stories: /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36325905

ZETA BASE 04/13/2025

ZETA BASE We could do nothing but weird small press lesbian novellas on this podcast and I'd be happy. This one's about how we really need to blow up the sun but we're too busy having smoldering academic love triangles. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36115525

BONUS: SHELL GAME 04/06/2025

BONUS: SHELL GAME Lianyu Tan joins us for another foray into literature that started life as Xena AU fanfiction (or Xena Uber, in the parlance of the time.) This one starts out as a pirate romp featuring the world's brattiest sub/voluntary slave girl and ends up in some really dark places. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/36025140

FEAST WHILE YOU CAN 03/30/2025

FEAST WHILE YOU CAN This is the most Wizards vs Lesbians book we've covered in ages, and it's also really good. It's a familiar setup - there's a thing in a pit in a little tiny town and the locals have to keep it fed. The beauty's in the execution. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/35922790

BONUS: THE EXPEDITION (A LOVE STORY) 03/23/2025

BONUS: THE EXPEDITION (A LOVE STORY) We adventure into the realm of non-fiction - mostly - for the first time, courtesy of Isaac Fellman, who has joined us to discuss a book about two disasters. The first is the Andree Expedition, a real-life polar quest which failed both disastrously and predictably; the second is an exercise for the reader. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/35824670

MOBY-DICK 03/16/2025

MOBY-DICK Finally, the all-caps title is correct! During the 2023 Wizzly awards we all said we were going to read Moby Dick by the time the next Wizzlies rolled around, and most of us did. It turns out it's really good. Like, I'd call it the great American novel, at least for the days before women were invented. Has anybody else heard about this? /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/35714875

BONUS: STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND 03/09/2025

BONUS: STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND We kick off a new series of author's choice episodes with Cameron Reed, who has brought us a novel you can chew on like the ragged edge of a thumbnail. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/35593090

THE GOLEM OF BROOKLYN 03/02/2025

THE GOLEM OF BROOKLYN This book is about whether murdering antisemites is a good idea or not, morally and strategically, and as such it's about Israel without ever discussing Israel, which as a rhetorical gambit has its advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage is that it's therefore a New York Novel and it comes with all the problems that implies. /episode/index/show/wizlez/id/35499140

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