Lydia Gregovic is an associate editor at Delacorte Press and the debut author of The Monstrous Kind, a dark YA fantasy inspired by Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. We asked Gregovic to discuss the origins of her novel and the experience of shifting back and forth between writing and editing with Delacorte VP and senior executive editor Krista Marino.
Krista Marino: I’m so excited for The Monstrous Kind to publish this fall! The way it came about is really interesting—at once unique and yet not so uncommon in publishing. I know your backstory well, but how would you tell your own origin story?
Lydia Gregovic: It’s been a long and interesting journey, to say the least. Back when I was in college, I was doing a lot of creative writing—my university was fairly small, so I remember seeking out any and every opportunity to write. I think I took all the creative writing classes offered by my sophomore year (thank you Dr. Pipkin for allowing me to enroll!). But once I graduated, my dream shifted to publishing. I knew I wanted to be an editor, and at that point in time, I believed it had to be one or the other: I could write, or I could edit. It wasn’t until 2020 during lockdown when I rewatched the excellent 1995 Sense and Sensibility adaptation with Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson that I found the inspiration to pick up the pen again.
Marino: So how did monsters fit into this?
Gregovic: I’ve always loved S&S—it was my first Austen book and for a while I even resisted reading Pride and Prejudice because I didn’t want anything to top it! And rediscovering it in lockdown, I had this feeling of wanting to champion the metaphorical underdog. We have so many excellent P&P adaptations. I wanted to do a retelling of this book I loved in the most fun and interesting way possible. And for me, nothing is more fun than monsters!
Marino: You and I have the same dark taste in fun. And speaking of which, when you shared the manuscript with me, you were very modest. You said something along the lines of, “I wanted to share this because I wanted to see if I could write a novel, but I still want to be an editor, too. Please don’t be upset.” When I started reading it, I was blown away by your writing. It’s such a different muscle to write fiction than it is to edit. After finishing it, I was so excited I shared it with our publisher. I then shared it with other people in our group, and from there we decided definitely no one else could have this book.
Gregovic: I remember the day I told you over the phone [about the book] and I distinctly recall pouring sweat because I was so nervous! As I’ve already mentioned, I was so new to the industry that I didn’t know if I was “allowed” to be both a writer and editor. I was terrified that if I expressed a desire to pursue one, people would doubt my commitment to the other. I had the insidious thought that other people were thinking, “Who does she think she is?” In the year-plus since then, the biggest surprise for me has been how not-alone I am in bridging both of these roles. It’s like Taylor Swift says, my dreams aren’t rare, and that is incredibly heartening and refreshing.
Marino: Absolutely. And speaking of doing both, it was so interesting seeing the difference between your “editor brain” and “author brain” during the revision process. Your writing is so beautiful and lyrical and atmospheric, but in the first draft, you were sticking much more heavily to the original structure of Sense and Sensibility. The main question we discussed was: what kind of retelling do you want this to be?
Gregovic: This was my first novel, and I’ve never written anything that rivaled its length. And like you say, originally I was very hesitant to break from the main beats of Austen’s work. Looking back, I think I was scared that if I diverged from the source text, I would be disrespecting it in some way. It took so long to identify the center of this book because I had to first figure out what Sense and Sensibility meant to me as the author of a new, and separate text, rather than what it meant to me as a fan of the original. It was an important distinction.
Marino: We talked about the difference between being inspired by versus retelling. And the most powerful retellings come from a place of deep inspiration and often are not even true retellings. They invert different parts of the story and conjure a different perspective. They also tend to surprise the readers as they’re expecting a familiar tale to end one way, but it goes the other.
Gregovic: I feel that any retelling should stem from a place of reaction: how were you, as a reader, impacted by this story? How did you relate to it, but also, how did you grate against it? In college, I was fascinated by Reader-Response theory—the idea that a text has no objective meaning, but rather a scope of meanings that are formed by the audiences who interact with it. The reader is, essentially, the creator of meaning. As an author, a part of me rebels against this—perhaps the part that has a twisted god-like instinct to control my characters—but on the subject of retellings I completely agree. I think meaning-making is the first step towards penning a great retelling.
Marino: What’s your favorite Austen retelling?
Gregovic: I don’t know if this is quite a retelling, but I have to mention it because it is so purely amazing: Austenland, which was originally a novel by Shannon Hale, though I embarrassingly have only seen the movie! Please don’t shame me. Not only does it feature an excellent Jennifer Coolidge cameo, but in the age of Bridgerton and this huge resurgence of the Regency romance, I think its message is just as applicable as ever. It isn’t afraid to poke fun at the odder realities of our collective obsession with these courtship stories. What makes a romantic hero? Why do we favor some romantic tropes over others? Ah, I just love it!
Marino: Right, we’re still obsessed with the wealth and splendor. It’s such a world of privilege. And if you were to ask me for my favorite retelling, mine is definitely Clueless.
Gregovic: Clueless is exceptional! I’m not sure if my retelling is Clueless-level, but I want to say—thank you for letting me talk to you about this book.
Marino: I can’t wait to see what the world thinks of it. It’s so very smart, enjoyable, scary—and of course romantic. Also, you clearly have never ridden a horse.
Gregovic: Yeah, I definitely have never ridden a horse.
The Monstrous Kind by Lydia Gregovic. Delacorte, $19.99 Sept. 3 ISBN 978-0-5935-7237-5
