Leigh Bardugo, “Dead Beat”
RJ Julia Booksellers
Trinity Church on the Green
New Haven
Sept. 15, 2026
For Leigh Bardugo, New Haven and Yale University were magical long before she started filling them with ghosts, demons and secret societies practicing the occult.
“This was magic to me,” the author said at a book talk at Trinity Church on the Green Tuesday night, remembering what it felt like to arrive on campus from Southern California. “Seeing these buildings, being in this place with this history.”
Decades later, that fascination became the foundation of her Ninth House trilogy, a dark-academia supernatural horror series (or what Bardugo refers to as a “hell heist”). In the novels, Yale’s real secret societies wield actual magic, the streets and buildings of New Haven conceal supernatural histories, and unlikely heroine Alex (Galaxy) Stern regularly finds herself battling demons from hell while juggling the demands of undergraduate life.
In Dead Beat, the concluding installment of the trilogy released this week, Stern and her crew have a fairly serious problem: Someone has accidentally left the door to hell open, and demons are running amok in the city.
But the trilogy’s supernatural New Haven has always been anchored in the real one. During her conversation Tuesday evening with authors Kelly Link and Holly Black, Bardugo said she challenged herself to build the books around “real places, real architecture and real people.” Even city history as obscure as a decades-old elm tree blight was useful to her magical plot.
“There’s an allure here,” Bardugo said. “Look at this place.”
That commitment to reality extended to Yale’s secret societies. Bardugo said she built each society’s fictional magic around its real-world reputation or location. A society such as Skull and Bones, associated with wealth and political power, wields magic that helps its members accumulate influence. Book and Snake, situated near a cemetery, naturally lent itself to necromancy. Manuscript Society, with prominent figures in entertainment like Anderson Cooper, inspired “charisma magic.” In a funny scene in Dead Beat, Stern and her crew interrupt Skull and Bones members helping a startup founder win over his investors through magic.
In real life, sometimes Wolf’s Head Society lets Bardugo come inside on her odd visit to New Haven. “None of the other societies have invited me. Weird,” she noted cheekily.
Maybe they’re upset that some readers think that everything in the book is real, which speaks to Bardugo’s ability to ground the story in specificity. Such is the thrill of reading her work: seeing the real set alongside the fantastical.
“I remember people being like, ‘She actually name checks Mamoun’s Falafel?,’” said Bardugo. She also mentions Yorkside Pizza in her series to pay homage to New Haven businesses that have survived Yale’s rent hikes. “Only people who know this neighborhood will understand any of that.”
Issues of class and institutional power are examined at length in the trilogy through the uncomfortable coupling of Yale’s privilege and New Haven’s challenges. Main character Stern makes no secret of her irreverence for Yale, which recruited her for her supernatural powers through Lethe House, a secret organization that monitors the secret societies to make sure they don’t get out of hand.
“Alex’s strength derives not just from her power. This was always very important to me. It derives from her knowledge of the world, and the fact that she has lived in the world in a way that other people haven’t,” said Bardugo. “Frankly, she understands that the lessons she learned to survive in Los Angeles are as vital, if not more vital, than the lessons she learned at Yale. That has definitely proven true for me too.”
Reflecting on lessons, Bardugo wondered if maybe none of her success would be happening had she written a book in her 20s. “If I hadn’t had a bunch of terrible jobs, then I wouldn’t have known myself. I feel like this had to be the path. But it would be nice if it was an easier path,” she laughed.
She dreamt of being a writer her entire life. Books were Bardugo’s refuge growing up. Her grandfather, who couldn’t afford to finish college, loved to read and instilled that passion in her. He thought the highest calling was to be a writer or a doctor.
“I was not charming. I was a big loser. I was weird and awkward and loud. I was shy but also wanted attention. I was a mess, and I didn’t know how to move through the world at all. I didn’t know how to talk to people,” she said. “For me, books were a safe place and a learning place.”
Books, she said, made her want to be bold. They taught her that all worlds were open to her.
Setting out to write a book of her own proved challenging. Bardugo started several books but could never write past the second half. Her goal with the first book she ever outlined, Shadow and Bone, was to simply make it to the end. The book launched a New York Times-bestselling trilogy and inspired a Netflix series of which she’s an executive producer.
Bardugo shared the advice she gave herself, to push past the obstacles, golden advice for any writer: “Get over yourself. Get over the idea that you have to write something perfect. Get over the idea that you’re going to write the Great American Novel. Find your process. Then just write as much garbage as you can. And write it with tremendous enthusiasm and passion.”
She added: “You will learn more from a full, finished, terrible draft than you will ever learn from a perfect first chapter.”
For her next book, she has an idea about a plot set in early 1900s century Los Angeles, involving poison. It won’t be fantasy. She’s also currently working on a horror project set in Southern California with other authors that is about the dark history of Spanish missions.
As the event ended, Bardugo thanked the audience. She loves hearing from Connecticut readers, she said.
“What I didn’t understand about becoming a writer was that it would connect me to people like you, my fellow weirdos. And that has been the most beautiful and unexpected gift of this career.”
For more of Leigh Bardugo, visit leighbardugo.com. To find out about RJ Julia’s events, visit rjjulia.com.
