Fresh Air - Best Of: Jon Bon Jovi / Fantasy Writer Leigh Bardugo

Episode Date: May 4, 2024

In a new Hulu docuseries, Jon Bon Jovi looks back on his career and his recovery after vocal surgery. He spoke with Terry Gross about his breakthrough hit "Runaway" and how he's evolved as a musician. Also, we'll hear from fantasy author Leigh Bardugo. She's best known for her YA series Shadow and Bone. Her new adult novel, The Familiar, set in 16th century Spain, is about a young woman who can perform miracles.Book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews a new collection of letters by Emily Dickinson.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

From WHYY in Philadelphia, I'm Terry Gross with Fresh Air Weekend. Shot through the heart and you're too late, darling, you gave love a bad name. Jon Bon Jovi has sung his anthems in stadiums around the world. After developing vocal problems, two years ago he had risky vocal surgery. Today we talk about his recovery, his long career, and the things he looks back on and laughs at, like some of his stage clothes. Is there something you particularly regret being... Oh, the 80s.

Also, we hear from fantasy author Leigh Bardugo, best known for her YA trilogy, Shadow and Bone. Bardugo's new adult novel, The Familiar, set during the Spanish Inquisition, is about a young woman who can perform miracles. And book critic Maureen Corrigan reviews a new collection of letters by Emily Dickinson. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend.

This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the first album by the band Bon Jovi. Since then, the band has sold more than 130 million albums. After decades of singing anthemic songs like Living on a Prayer, You Give Love a Bad Name, and Wanted Dead or Alive, in sold-out stadiums around the world, my guest, Jon Bon Jovi, started having

vocal problems that got worse over time. He tried every kind of therapy, and when none of them was effective enough to make a significant difference, he did what he wanted to avoid. He had surgery. Although it didn't restore his voice to what it used to be, the surgery made it possible for him to sing again. Now, Jon Bon Jovi is the subject of a new documentary called Thank You, Good Night, The Bon Jovi Story. It alternates between a retrospective of his life and career and his reckoning with his vocal problems over the past few years. In celebration of the 40th anniversary, a new Bon Jovi album called Forever will be released in June. This year, in conjunction with the Grammys, Bon Jovi was named the Music Cares Person of the Year.

The tribute concert included a performance by his New Jersey friend, Bruce Springsteen, who Bon Jovi has known since he was a teenager. Let's start with the best-known track from his first album, called Bon Jovi, which was released 40 years ago. The song is Runaway. ¶¶ All your best When's your daddy Gonna talk to you But you were living In another world Trying to get A message through

No one heard A single word you said They should have seen it In your eyes What was going Round your head Oh, she's a little runaway Daddy's curling fast

All the things he couldn't say Oh, she's a little runaway That's Runaway from Bon Jovi's first album, recorded 40 years ago. John Bon Jovi, welcome back to Fresh Air. Thank you. Congratulations on the anniversary and the documentary and the new album and the successful surgery. It's great to be here, and it's great to talk to you again. I looked forward to this interview.

Oh, me too. So let's go back 40 years ago when the song we just heard was released. What were you hoping for when you released your first album, and what did you expect from your future? Boy, the future was bright, but nobody had any idea where it would lead us. I think that all you could ever have prayed for was that somebody would give you an opportunity. And for me, that opportunity came when I went to see a DJ in 1983 and was fortunate enough that that new

radio station did not have a receptionist. When I tapped on the window of the broadcast booth, the DJ made the sign of shush by putting his finger across his lips and the program director came out. He said, what can I help you with? And I told him I'd love him to hear some music. They asked me to wait until after the shift. He came out. He heard that song run away.

And he said, you know, that's a hit song. And I said, I know. And then they proceeded to tell me about a homegrown talent album that they wanted to support. And that song could be on that record. Little did I know that that was going to lead to a major record deal that I still have today, some 40 years later. So 40 years ago, when you were starting your recording career, who did you think you would be in your 60s? Did you think you'd still be performing? Did you think you'd ever be in your 60s? Because when you're 20s, you don't think, you know, 60s seems like leaps and leaps away. You know, back in those days, I think as far

ahead as I'd ever dreamt was the year 2000, because it was that magical science fiction number. Where are we as a race going to be in 2000? At that time, I was meant to be 38 years old. I thought, well, am I going to still have a record deal? Will I have a family? But I never dreamt about 2024 and a 40th anniversary. Who could have? Were you listening to any performers who are the age you are now? Sure, but they were my parents' favorites. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Gene Autry. God, I love Gene Autry. So did I. Somebody just asked what was the first records I recall, and it was Gene Autry. I mean, I love Sinatra, too. Yeah.

So they weren't going to have been my choices, but they were my parents' choices. Forty years ago, where would rock and roll be, you know, for men and women who were 60 and on? There weren't anybody to refer to. And now you can look and the Rolling Stones are 80 plus and the E Street Band are 70 plus and U2 and Bon Jovi are 60 plus and very active. So you're kind of at a turning point in your career because of your voice issues. How do you feel about your voice now? You know what the public are going to see as of this interview and the docuseries was shot one and two years ago. And I did have some major issues, things that weren't visible to me, because any singer knows about something called nodules. And they look like a little pimple on the vocal cord and they can easily cut those off and you recover from it.

Mine was a little different where one of my cords was actually atrophying. And they had to put in an implant, a cortex implant outside of the cords to rebuild them. And so the process has been slower than I'd hoped for. But the progress and the process are really doing very well. I'm currently able to sing. For me now, the bar is, can I do two and a half hours a night, four nights a week? How did your vocal cord, how did one of the folds atrophy? I think of atrophy happening because you're not using something, whereas for you, if anything,

you were overusing it. I think that is the bottom line, is that I was overusing it. Even though I'm trained and I have studied the craft for these 40 years, eventually, you know, the body gives out. It's not dissimilar than being an athlete. And I equate it to Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan or Tom Brady. And when they'd had those major setbacks, they wondered, would they come back? And it took a lot and it took medical professionals to figure out the right way to bring you back. Patience is not a virtue I am well known for. So I lack in the patience department. But every day I'm at it. You know, every day is some kind of therapy to try to get back to that two and a half hours a night. What's the work that you have to do?

It began very slowly with just speech therapies. And then it's vocal therapy that starts as any singer would understand, vocal warm-ups. But eventually, it's gotten back into retraining the chords because of the compensation that I had to do. When you compensate for as long as I had to as a result of this chord deteriorating, and I couldn't understand how or why, I've now had to untangle that mess. And that's sort of the process I'm in now. It's like if you're limping and you favor one leg. Correct. Exactly that.

Yeah. What was the conversation you had in your own head about whether to retire from music or keep at it and try to keep finding solutions? I jokingly have said I would never become the fat Elvis. And I don't mean that with any disrespect, but I love what I do. And the audience deserve the best of me. And I can only give the best. I'm not willing to be out there walking through the motions or changing the keys of this. I'm just not interested.

Now, with that said, in truth, I can always write another record. I'm not worried about my ability to write another song. If I can't hit B's and C's, which at 62 years old is sort of fair, I could have walked away. I just haven't had to come to that conclusion because, as I said, the process and the progress are steady. My guest is Jon Bon Jovi. There's a new four-part documentary series called Thank You, Good Night, The Bon Jovi Story that's streaming on Hulu. We'll hear more of our conversation after a break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Jon Bon Jovi. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the band Bon Jovi's first album. They've since sold over

130 million albums and played to sold-out stadiums around the world. A new four-part documentary about Jon Bon Jovi's life and career called Thank You, Good Night, The Bon Jovi Story is streaming on Hulu. What kind of balance have you wanted to have in your life between wanting to stay youthful and hold on to all the things you were able to do when you were in your 20s and started you know having a real career and you know you know uh being in the moment and in in in the body and mind of the person who you are now in your early 60s? Well, I think that my goal always was to evolve

and not to ever have pretended to be 25 when I was even 35. You know, when I was 25, I accepted, acknowledged, and participated in all the mannerisms of a 25-year-old kid figuring it out. But if I had come and tried to be on fresh air at 62 pretending to be 25, I think this interview would have been over by now. I don't think the judge would have that, but you're probably right. I have a feeling that's the case. But, you know, I think part of having a career, as I've been blessed enough to have,

is that our audience grew with us. Now, whether you got on or off the path junctures. And so whether it was 2000, When It's My Life, or 2005, when we were the first rock band to ever win a number one country song, or what will happen now with this docuseries in 2024 as a new generation is going to hear this music for the first time. And that's all well and good. But the new age and era in which we live allows for music to be discovered in a new way, and therefore it's not even in a time capsule. It's just in there forever. Music, you press a button, and it's playing in your ears. You don't see the visuals. You don't associate it with anything. You just hear a song.

And if the song's good, it's going to resonate with the next generation. The visuals. You mentioned in the documentary that you hated rock videos. And I was kind of glad to hear that. Because what always bothered me is that it was somebody's interpretation of the song or not even just somebody's idea of like great surreal images. And it kind of was so distracting from what the song was saying yep you know it's hard enough to learn your craft and then to learn how to write a song then when they thrust upon you the opportunity to make these videos and or album covers i can't tell you that it came to me easily and especially on those first couple records when you knew nothing about nothing, when they force-fed you a director or an album artist, you just said yes.

And it wasn't until the third album, the fourth album, and now my 18th album, that you take control of these things. Is there something you particularly regret being pushed to do? Oh, the 80s. But my life, as I told you, is so blessed, Terry, that those baby pictures of me in those clothes are public. And that's my penance. I'll accept it. So it was your third album that got really popular, and it had your most famous anthems on it, and it totally changed your life and the life of everyone in

the band. One of the anthems on that album is You Give Love a Bad Name, which has a line, shot in the heart, and you're to blame, you give love a bad name. On your first album that was released 40 years ago, you have a song called Shot in the Heart. That's a completely different song, but it has that shot in the heart line. And I keep wondering, like, how did you decide to recycle the line? And my theory is that Shot in the Heart is such a good line that you thought, not that many people know that song. I have to put it in a song that really works. You're pretty much pretty accurate there. Tell me more. Shot through the heart. Yeah, Shot through the heart yeah shot through the heart yes yes yeah yeah i think that's pretty accurate there you had to be honest um you know the title you

give love a bad name just sounded like a smash hit and so i i said that line having said it once before i guess it's proof that i came up with the line um but yeah yeah yeah i yeah Guilty as charged I wasn't as prolific as I became But early on that was a line in a song On a little known album that we used again So I'm going to play a little bit of both songs Just to compare them back to back So we'll hear Shot in the Heart From Bon Jovi's first album 40 years ago

And then You Give Love a Bad Name from the third album. Shot through the heart as I lay there alone in the dark. Shot through the heart. It's all part of the game that we call love. Oh, there's nowhere to run. No one can save me. The damage is done. Shot through the heart.

And you're to blame You give up A bad name I play my part And you play your game You give up A bad name And you give up

A bad name Two songs by Bon Jovi that have the line, Shot in the heart. John, what did you learn about songwriting in between that first version of a song with the line, Shot in the heart, and the second version, which was a huge hit? Yes, it was.

Well, like with anything else, one would hope that you get better with time and experience. It was the third album that everything changed. And with anything else, one would hope that you get better with time and experience. It was the third album that everything changed. And like everything else, you know, you started to figure it out. You know, you started to think about what other songs were on the charts, what you did with an audience and why a song worked live or why it didn't work live. And playing in a bar in New Jersey was one way to cut your teeth. But getting out there and playing to audiences don't even speak your language. You had to find other means to win over the hearts and minds of the audiences. So now that when I hear somebody say, I learned

how to speak English singing your songs, you better learn how to do it better. And that's really what's come with it. You started performing in bars in Asbury Park where you heard Springsteen in his really early days and Southside Johnny. Can you compare who you were when you were performing at bars in Asbury Park versus when you started performing in stadiums? Oh, boy.

You know, Southside and Bruce and then, of course, all the members of the E Street Band and the Jukes were at least 12-ish years older. So they were not only role models, but they were friendly to the young kids. They were the influence and they were telling you about their influence. So that was an integral thing too, is they introduced me to not only their music, but the music that they listened to, which was then helpful for me to understand what the process was and why you wrote songs and how you wrote songs.

But that was, although it was a huge part of my upbringing, then I was also influenced by what was contemporary rock and roll, you know, Queen and Led Zeppelin and Bad Company and Elton John and all the things that were on the radio in the latter 70s. But those things just seem bigger than bigger than life. They were just posters on your wall. Whereas Southside Johnny and Bruce Springsteen, although they were making albums and were my childhood heroes, were 25 miles south of my house. So on any given night in those bars, you're going to see one of those 17 men hanging around in the bar. And it was sort of like being that close to Santa Claus because, you know, something fictional that you made real. You could go and touch them. You could talk to them. You could watch them. Springsteen, when he performs, doesn't wear costumes.

It's usually jeans and a T-shirt. That is his costume. Oh, is that how you think of it? That's his logo? That's like saying Jimmy Buffett wearing shorts and flip-flops. That was Jimmy. Right. But anyhow, go ahead. Yeah, so when you were performing in bars, you probably just wore jeans and a Tflops. That was Jimmy. Right. But anyhow, go ahead.

So when you were performing in bars, you probably just wore jeans and a t-shirt. T-shirts and a jean, sure, sure. So I'd like you to compare can I use the word persona when you were performing in bars, compare that to who you were on stage once you started performing in stadiums. And if you

thought of yourself as having a persona on stage once you started performing in stadiums? And if you thought of yourself as having a persona on stage once you started doing stadium concerts? Well, having grown up in public, you were going to do things and try things and see what kind of shoes fit. And blue jeans and T-shirts were what we were meant to be. But in honesty, in 1984, 85, 86, when you're being told by the quote unquote record company and the managers and the agents and the, and the headliners

that you were supporting, this will help you be more successful. In honesty, we were probably trying on shoes that didn't fit. and we were lumped in with a certain group of bands that i never bought their records and i wasn't necessarily fans of but we were cutting our teeth on that international stage there's a story i want you to tell that you tell in the documentary series and it And you're playing in Russia. The Soviet Union at the time, but yes. Yeah, and no one there knows Bon Jovi. No.

No one in the audience. So you felt like, oh, and you didn't want to be upstaged by the other band that they did know? I think you were opening for them? Well, here's the story. Yeah. Our first manager had gotten himself in some trouble. And as a part of his plea, he had asked the courts if he were to put on a show

in what was then the Soviet Union. And he took a bunch of bands over. Was this like as an ambassador from the United States or something? Well, if you want a drug dealer to be your ambassador. Yeah, I know, but... We went, and it was a bunch of the bands of the era, and we knew everybody, and we were at the height of the New Jersey record,

which was the follow-up to Slippery When Wet, so we were going to close the show. And realizing once we got there that the soviet union did not have tower records so therefore they didn't have living on a prayer and you give love a bad name or run away on the radio and um so you're playing and winning hearts the way you did when you were a completely unknown kid on the stage in new Jersey. And we followed a German band by the name of the Scorpions, who we had once opened for in 1984. And they were a relentless live band, phenomenal live band. And to tell you the honest to goodness truth,

they won the hearts of that crowd that day. And then we came on and followed him. And I started speaking English and telling the stories of the songs and performing. And we were falling flat. Okay, fine. We got our butts kicked. The next night, now that I had had a feel for what it was and all of the experience and all of the influence in my career, I said, I see the trick. I got it. So I took a Russian soldier backstage, took his uniform from him, traded him some blue jeans and some Harley Davidson t-shirts, to be honest. And I got his uniform and I said to the band, start this first song, just keep playing the intro over and over again. I'm going to enter from the back of the entire

stadium. And I was dressed as a Russian soldier and in that documentary you see the film where I throw the coat I take off the gloves I eventually take off the long coat and hat jump up on the stage and perform the song 30 years later I went back and I played that same stadium and I was telling the story to a member of the press. And I began the story. And he said, can I finish the story for you? And I said, wow, you know, this story. He said, I was there. And he said, it became folklore here. That's, you know, how you won the hearts of the Russian kids. John, it's been really great to talk with you. Thank you so much. And just congratulations on all that you've done.

I appreciate that very much. And I really was looking forward to today. And it's great to speak with you again. The new documentary series about Bon Jovi is streaming on Hulu. The band's new album, Forever, will be released in June. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan has a review of a hefty new collection of letters by one of America's greatest poets. Here's Maureen's appreciation of The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Among the great moments in literary history I wish I could have witnessed is that day sometime after May 15, 1886, when Lavinia Dickinson entered the bedroom of her newly deceased older sister and began opening drawers. Out sprang poems, some 1,800 of them. Given that Emily Dickinson had only published 10 poems during her lifetime, this discovery was a shock. Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, begins one of those now famous poems. Whatever Dickinson hoped for her poems,

she could never have envisioned how they'd resonate with readers, nor how curious those readers would be about her life, much of it spent within her father's house in Amherst, and in later years, within that bedroom. Every so often, the reading public's image of Emily Dickinson shifts. For much of the 20th century, she was a fae Stevie Nicks type figure. Check out, for instance, the 1976 film of Julie Harris's lauded one-woman show, The Bell of Amherst. A feminist Emily Dickinson emerged during the second women's movement, when poems like I'm Wife were celebrated for their avant-garde anger. And jumping to the present, a new monumental volume of Dickinson's letters,

the first in over 60 years, gives us an engaged Emily Dickinson, a woman in conversation with the world through gossip as well as remarks about books, politics, and the signal events of her age, particularly the Civil War. This new collection of the letters of Emily Dickinson is published by Harvard's Belknap Press and edited by two Dickinson scholars, Christanne Miller and Donald Mitchell. To accurately date some of Dickinson's letters, they've studied weather reports and seasonal blooming and harvest cycles in 19th century Amherst. They've also added some 300 previously uncollected letters to this volume for a grand total of 1,304 letters. The result is that the letters of Emily Dickinson reads like the closest thing we'll probably ever have to an intimate autobiography of the poet. The first letter here is written by an 11-year-old Dickinson to her brother Austin away at school. It's a breathless kid sister marvel of run-on sentences about yellow hens and

skunks and poor cousin Zabina who had a fit the other day and bit his tongue. The final letter by an ailing 55-year-old Dickinson, most likely the last she wrote before falling unconscious on May 13, 1886, was to her cousins, Louisa and Francis Norcross. It reads, Little Cousins, Called Back, Emily. In Between is a life filled with visitors, chores, and recipes for donuts and coconut cakes. There's mention of the racist minstrel stereotype Jim Crow, as well as of public figures like Florence Nightingale and Walt Whitman. There are also allusions to the death toll of the ongoing Civil War. Dickinson's loyal dog Carlo walks with her, and frogs and even flies keep her company. Indeed, in an 1859 letter about one such winged companion, Bella Vamherst's charm alternates with cold-blooded callousness. Dickinson writes to her cousin Louisa, I enjoy much with a fly during sister's absence,

not one of your blue monsters, but a timid creature that hops from pain to pain so very cheerfully and hums and thrums a sort of spec piano. I'll kill him the day Lavinia comes home, for I shan't need him anymore. Dickinson's singular voice comes into its own in the letters of the 1860s, which often blur into poems, cryptic, comic, and charged with awe. A simple thank you note to her soulmate and beloved sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert Dickinson, reads, Dear Sue, the supper was delicate and strange. I ate it with compunction, as I would eat a vision. 1,304 letters, and still they're not enough. Scholars estimate that we only have about one-tenth of the letters Dickinson ever wrote. And on that momentous day in 1886, Lavinia entered her sister's bedroom to find and successfully burn all the letters Dickinson

herself had received from others during her lifetime. Such was the custom of the day, which makes this new volume of Dickinson's letters feel like both an intrusion and an outwitting of the silence of death, something I want to believe Dickinson would have relished. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed The Letters of Emily Dickinson. Coming up, we hear from best-selling fantasy author Leigh Bardugo. She has a new novel for adults set during the Spanish Inquisition. It's

about a young woman who can perform miracles. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air Weekend. Leigh Bardugo is one of today's most successful and popular authors working in the fantasy genre, writing books for both the adult and YA markets. She became famous with her Shadow and Bone novels, which took place in a world inspired by 19th century Russia. They were adapted into a series for Netflix. Her latest novel, The Familiar, takes place in 16th century Spain. Bardugo spoke with our producer, Sam Brigger. Here's Sam. The heroine of The Familiar is Lucia, a young woman with little prospects,

working in the kitchen of a not-very-important noble and his wife in Madrid. However, Lucia has a secret. She's able to perform small miracles. Like when the cook burns the bread, she's able to unburn it. Her secret is discovered by her employer, the haughty woman of the house, Doña Valentina, who imagines she will be able to rise in society, having such a woman working for her. But the story of Lucia's parlor trick-like miracles travels fast, and members of King Philip II's court take notice. Perhaps, they think,

she can serve a larger purpose in the pursuits of Spain's empire. But first she must prove her magical skills in a contest with other miracle workers, some of whom may be hucksters, some might be real. And in a society policed by the Inquisition, she must prove that her abilities are the products of God's blessings and not the work of the devil, which would surely be the conclusion if it's revealed that she is of Jewish descent, that she is one of the conversos, the Jews that in 1492, when faced with exile from Spain, converted to Catholicism to remain. Lucia faces mortal traps everywhere as she tries to find a place for herself in the oppressive world she's been born into, and as she discovers love.

Leigh Bardugo is well known for her YA books in the Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows series, as well as her adult books Ninth House and Hellbent, which take place on a version of Yale's campus where she went to school, where magic is used to maintain the power and privilege of the school's secret societies like Skull and Bones. Leigh Bardugo, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you for having me. I'd like to start, if you're willing, with a reading from the new book, The Familiar. This is after Doña Valentina thinks that something is up because she came into the kitchen, saw there was some burnt bread. She got very angry, yelled at the cook. And then when she comes back, the bread is no longer burnt. She thinks maybe someone's pulling a trick on her, but she's not sure what's going on.

And we're going to hear from Lucia's point of view here. When Lucia had seen the burnt bread, she hadn't thought much about passing her hand over it and singing the words her aunt had taught her. Aboltar casal, aboltar mazal. A change of scene, a change of fortune. She sang them very softly. They were not quite Spanish, just as Lucia was not quite Spanish. But Doña Valentina would never have her in this house, even in the dark, hot, windowless kitchen, if she detected a whiff of Jew.

Lucia knew that she should be careful. But it was difficult not to do something the easy way when everything else was so hard. She slept every night on the cellar floor, a roll of rags she'd sewn together, a sack of flour for her pillow. She woke before dawn and went out into the cold alley to relieve herself, then returned and stoked the fire before walking to the Plaza del Arabal to fetch water from the fountain, where she saw other scullions and washerwomen and wives,

said her good mornings, then filled her buckets and balanced them on her shoulders to make the trip back to Calle de los Santos. She set the water to boil, picked the bugs out of the millet, and began the day's bread if Agueda hadn't yet seen to it. It was the cook's job to visit the market, but since her son had fallen in love with that dashing lady playwright, it was Lucia who took the little pouch of money and walked the stalls trying to find the best price for lamb and heads of garlic and hazelnuts. She was bad at haggling. So sometimes, on the way back to Casa Ordóñez, if she found herself alone on an empty street, she would give her basket a shake and sing, ¿Dónde irás, amigos toparas?

Wherever you go, may you find friends. And where there had been six eggs, there would be a dozen. Thanks so much for reading that. You know, magic has been a prevailing interest in all of your books. Why do you think you're so drawn to the idea of magic? I think that magic is essentially just a metaphor, right? It's just another kind of power. And I think as I've written, the magic in my books has gotten smaller and the real world has overtaken it because I think magic is at its most interesting when it is limited and when it exists for a metaphor for power. So in Ninth House and Hellbent,

there are very real secret societies at Yale that to one degree or another wield economic, social, political influence. Well, what if they wielded magical influence as well? And what does it mean to put that kind of power into the hands of a bunch of undergrads? When I was writing this book, The Familiar, I wanted to pose the question of what magic might look like to the church of the time and where the line between magic and miracle actually exists. Lee, I wanted to talk about the series that you've been working on. The first two books came out before The Familiar. I guess I'm going to call it the Ninth House series. There's two of them so far, Ninth House and Hellbent. And this is a really clever rewriting of Yale University where you went to school.

Yale is known for having these secret societies where a lot of the most famous alum were members, perhaps the best known of these societies, the Skull and Bones, where the two Bush presidents were members. But so you've imbued them with the ability to do magic. They all have specialties, like Skull and Bones prognosticates by reading human entrails. So how did this idea come to you? I mean, I think it began when I was an undergrad. When I was an undergraduate, we still wrote letters. And our post office was off campus. And I remember walking back, reading a letter as a freshman. And I looked up from my letter. And to my right were the gates of the Grove Street Cemetery, which is really right in the middle of campus. And there's a huge, the gates are these sort of huge Neo-Egyptian plinth

that reads, the dead shall be raised. And to the left was a massive mausoleum on a street corner the size of an apartment building with black wrought iron fences around it with black wrought iron snakes crawling up them. And later I would learn that this was Book and Snake, which is one of what are called the ancient eight, the old landed societies that have tombs or really just clubhouses, windowless clubhouses on campus. But called tombs, right? They are called tombs and sometimes crypts. Yeah. So these are societies who in theory are secret but who build these giant, very showy crypts around campus. The scroll and key one is beautiful. It has a kind of Moorish facade.

Wolf's Head is a giant English tutor mansion. They want you to notice their secret places. 100%. Look at us, don't look at us. And so I was obsessed with these when I was an undergraduate. I found them fascinating. And so I think this story has been percolating for a long time. Your main character, Alex, is very much a fish out of water in this environment. She comes from California. She's a former drug addict and survived this terrible homicide. She sees ghosts and is able to use them temporarily to sort of gain strength. She has a very cynical view of humanity, and she has a little empathy for the many privileged students she encounters at Yale.

In fact, I really think sometimes the only thing that Alex likes about Yale is the architecture. I don't think that's fair. I'm going to be real. I don't think that's fair. She loves her roommates. She loves her roommates. She loves Mercy and Lauren. She likes the cafeteria. Yes, she loves the cafeteria. She loves food. In fact, that was the one thing my editor made me trim down in the book was he said there are too many rapturous descriptions of food. But I had grown up eating frozen dinners. And so when I went to – everybody else was talking about how bad the food was.

And I thought I had – I was rolling in clover. And she likes her classes. She loves the idea of learning for the sake of learning. She just doesn't feel it's an option for her. Okay, fair. But let's say she has very ambivalent views of Yale. Does that reflect your experience when you went there? Yes. I think without the wish fulfillment aspect of Yale and of a place like Yale, both the beauty of it and the promises it makes, a story like this doesn't work. Because if it wasn't, if there wasn't an allure to this, if there wasn't pleasure in these things, then why would we stay? Why even bother? So that is an important part of the story.

And that's certainly something I felt when I went to Yale. I felt as if I was surrounded by people who spoke a language I did not understand. They had a vocabulary I did not understand. They had family experiences I did not understand. And so I constantly felt like an imposter when I was there. And that is certainly something that Alex is contending with. You said that before you went to college, you thought of your life as small in California. Yeah. I mean, I think for most young people, life is small because we don't have a lot of autonomy. You know, for me, there was home and there was school and there was the mall and I was a big nerd. So there weren't a lot of parties. It was me hanging out with my friend Lizzie and watching horror movies

and eating sour candy on the weekends. I was not an edgy kid. I was a lonely kid. And I will say that I wondered when I was young if I might be a sociopath because I didn't feel a deep connection to my friend group. I thought maybe, and I read a lot. So I knew what – I had read Anne of Green Gables.

I knew what friendship was supposed to be like. And so I thought maybe there's something fundamentally wrong with me that I cannot connect to the people around me when the truth was they were wonderful people. But they were not the people who were going to be, you know, my tribe, my army. And those were the people – I just had to meet more human beings. You know, I went to a tiny school and I was not somebody who was brave enough to step out of my bubble very often. Do you remember the first time where you sort of felt a strong connection to someone? Yeah. My dear friend Hedwig – yes, her name is Hedwig.

She lived upstairs from me. She wasn't one of my roommates. But I remember when we met, feeling a kind of instant kinship. And I remember thinking, oh, she actually gets my sense of humor. This is somebody who doesn't just tolerate me or think I'm quirky. This is someone who will celebrate this and whose quirkiness I can celebrate in turn. So, Leigh, you grew up in Los Angeles. Yes. Well, you've described yourself as a goth kid. So I'm guessing sunny Southern California wasn't necessarily a good fit for you? No., I live in Los Angeles now, but I never intended to come back. And when I went to college, I wanted to get as far as way far away as I possibly could. I, I think like a lot of young people felt alien. And, you know, I had gone to this

very small school, a lot of smart kids at it. And then my mom remarried and we moved and I started junior high and a very prolonged, awkward phase. And all of a sudden I was at this school where everyone was tan and blonde and loved the beach and hacky sack and volleyball was the most important thing. And books and schoolwork and theater and music were not – they weren't interesting to a lot of people in the way that they were to me. And so I needed to find my crew, my crew of fellow listeners of The Cure and Morrissey in order to find any kind of sense of stability or safety. But that is also when I fell in love with fantasy and science fiction. And I have a very clear memory. I mean, I was utterly miserable in the seventh and eighth grade. I was completely lost. And I remember walking into our school library and some beautiful librarian had set out a table of books of science fiction and fantasy classics that said,

Discover New Worlds, and boy, did I need that. I needed to know there was more than the world I lived in, and I fell into those, and that's when I started writing kind of, I guess what would now be described as self-insert fan fiction about, you know, very, you know, beautiful and tough and brainy blonde girls, you know, saving the world. But that was what I needed. I needed to know there were worlds where being clever and smart and prepared and giving a damn were more important than being cheerful or cute or popular because I was none of those things. Well, you described writing at that point as like a survival mechanism, right? Yes.

So you're trying to survive junior high? Is that what you were trying to survive? I mean, people will mock teenagers for their sense of drama, right? Like, oh, it's not the end of the world. It kind of can be. Oh, it's a terrible time. There's absolutely nothing good about being a teenager. Absolutely not.

And it is a perilous time. There are a lot of ways your life can go wrong in those years where you can make bad decisions or undermine your future or experience heartbreak or violence or all kinds of things. You are so vulnerable at that time. And it's one of the reasons my heart breaks for young people on social who are growing up with a constant sense of approval and judgment that is so much wider than just the jerks who happen to be in your class.

Now there's a whole world of jerks to judge you or approve of you. So it felt like a deeply perilous time. And I was, you know, loneliness is a real, it's really a kind of poison. And I felt it so deeply. And in books, I wasn't lonely. I wasn't afraid. And if I was afraid, well, then the monster would be bested at the end. That was very valuable to me. And when I meet young people who use my books as comfort reads or who say to me, this got me through my ninth grade year, I just think that is the greatest compliment I can receive as an author. If you can escape for a while in one of my books, that is a gift to me to hear that. So was reading and writing kind of magical to you?

Oh, very much so. I mean, I would ditch class to go to the library. That's the kind of kid I was, to just fall into fiction for a little bit, to discover a book on the shelves, or to just sit there writing longhand, you know, what were really dreadful, you know, dreadful stories, but they were where I was strong and brave and beautiful. And I had friends like that was I was creating my own reality in those moments. And it was very powerful. It was a very powerful refuge. Clothing can 14 can be like a kind of armor. Your clothing can feel protective and maybe even more so if you're a self-described goth kid. Did you have clothes

like that that were like your armor? I definitely did. You know, we didn't really have Hot Topic at that time, but I was, or not one near me, but that was definitely my aesthetic. We would go to Melrose every weekend. And I was a nerd though, still, you know, I was nervous about things like cutting my hair. And, you know, I found punk boys very, very entrancing, but also terrifying. And I, and so I wasn't the kind of kid who was going out to clubs and was living that life, but I wanted desperately to be. And then when I went to college, my mom actually called it my preppy drag phase because I completely transformed myself into someone else because I was still trying to figure out kind of how to live in the world. And for a while it was, you know, J.Crew sweaters and white collared shirts. Well, I think everyone goes through those stages, don't they?

I think we have to. And one of the greatest gifts aging has given me is that now I actually dress a lot like I did when I was 14. I can just afford nicer black garments and more copious amounts of jewelry from blood milk because I now have found my way back to the person that I was before the world kind of kicked my individuality out of me. Well, Leigh Bardugo, thanks so much for coming on Fresh Air. Thank you for having me. This, Leigh Bardugo, thanks so much for coming on Fresh Air. Thank you for having me. This was great. Leigh Bardugo spoke with Fresh Air producer Sam Brigger. Bardugo's new novel is called The Thank you. Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Anne-Marie Boldenato, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavey-Nesper.

Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross. This message comes from Grammarly. Back-and-forth communication at work is costly. That's why over 70,000 teams and 30 million people use Grammarly's AI to make their points clear the first time. Better writing, better results. Learn more at grammarly.com slash enterprise.