Shows / Romancing the Threshold
Romancing the Threshold
Romance novels as threshold medicine. Conversations with romance authors and others who work at the threshold, reading stories for what they teach about our own crossings.
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Episodes
Romancing the ThresholdGrumpy Sunshine: My Husband on Romance
Once a season, my husband Jason comes back to the show, and this year he invited himself. Almost two years into my romance reading, we talk about what it has…
Romancing the ThresholdKelly Jarvis: Beauty and the Beast as an Economic Story
Fairy tales were not written for children, and most of them are not love stories at all. Kelly Jarvis, who teaches fairy tales and folklore, returns to the…
Romancing the ThresholdRomance Book Club Roundtable: A Happily Ever After Every Day
Ask a room of romance readers what the books do for them and the first word is escape. Then coping. Then checking out. Stay a little longer and the stories say…
Romancing the ThresholdChrista Lewis: The Body Behind the Voice
When you listen to an audiobook, a stranger's voice has been in your head for ten hours or more, and most of us never stop to wonder whose body it came out of…
Romancing the ThresholdThe Threshold Lover: The Eight Companions Hiding in Your TBR
Romance novels are medicine for the crossing. Not a distraction from your life changing. Medicine for it. Season two of Romancing the Threshold opens on its…
Romancing the ThresholdThe Books That Read You Back
Some doors close so quietly we forget our own hand was on them. Rebecca Nelson, a literature student and bookseller who helps run a romance book club, sat down…
Romancing the ThresholdKelly Jarvis on the Power of the Small
The smallest things tend to carry the most: a fairy tale, a love story, a cup of tea made with real attention. Vanessa sits down with writer and fairy tale…
Romancing the ThresholdKarla Sorensen on the Why of Characters, Writing Craft, and the Body of the Writer
Karla Sorensen writes contemporary romance set in the world of professional football, and inside her pages she's quietly doing something extraordinary…
Romancing the ThresholdYour Body is Reading the Book Too
Content note: This episode touches briefly on a sexual assault scene from a romance novel as the entry point for our somatic conversation. The scene itself…
Romancing the ThresholdWhich Door Is Yours?
There are five aspects of the self that culture teaches women to hide — and romance novels have been quietly reopening every single one. In this solo episode…
Romancing the ThresholdYour Bookshelf Is Your Grimoire
Almost twenty years ago, a dream about a wedding made me abandon my thesis on Saturn and depression and write instead about the healing power of romantic…
Romancing the ThresholdSharon Lynn Fisher: Small Magic, Ancient Power
Sharon Lynn Fisher writes cozy gothic romances set in Victorian England: stories full of tea, herbs, cottage witchcraft, and heroines who can't stop asking…
Romancing the ThresholdCassie Alexander: Getting Curious with the Monster
When AI arrived, most people chose a side — fear or adoration. Cassie Alexander chose a third way: curiosity. Romance author, nurse, monster-romance pioneer —…
Romancing the ThresholdWhen the world gets strange, desire becomes our compass
In this episode of Romancing the Threshold, Vanessa sits down with author Layla Fae for a conversation that moves through creativity, desire, monster romance…
Romancing the ThresholdWeaving the WYRD While Empires White-Knuckle Death
While systems grip their dying world, we're midwifing what's being born through every story we love. In this solo episode, I weave together childhood under…
Romancing the ThresholdHaving your VISA Declined at the Threshold
In this intimate conversation, Vanessa sits with her friend Jessiemarie to explore an unexpected threshold space: the adult retail shop. Drawing from her…
Romancing the ThresholdBreaking the Spell of Separation: A Celtic Shaman's Guide to Romancing Uncertainty
Celtic shaman and author Jane Burns illuminates how threshold spaces—those uncomfortable in-between times we rush through—are actually portals of creative…
Romancing the ThresholdThe Bestiary of Unearthing
A solo episode closing out a transformative year. After cataloging 50 monsters across 125 romance novels, seven creatures emerged as threshold guides through…
Romancing the ThresholdWhat Story Are You Telling at the Threshold?
Rune reader and elder Ingrid Kincaid explores how every threshold demands sacrifice and why the stories we tell about change shape our experience of it. We…
Romancing the ThresholdWhen the Avalanche Reveals the Valley
When an avalanche buries your world, what gets revealed? Author Ella Larson joins me to explore how her Hidden Folk series teaches us to meet catastrophic…
Romancing the ThresholdWalking to the Edge of Desire: My Husband Reads Romance
In this anniversary‑week episode, my husband Jason steps into my world of romance novels—book boyfriends, monster lovers, and all. Far from his usual orbit of…
Romancing the ThresholdCrossing the Threshold: On Liminality, Descent, and Becoming
In this episode of Romancing the Threshold, I’m joined by astrologer and storyteller Brian Clark to explore the threshold as both pause and passage — a place…
Romancing the ThresholdThe Art of Falling in Love with the In‑Between
In this first episode of Romancing the Threshold, I invite you into the charged space of the in‑between—the moment before the door opens. I share the…