Brea Grant and Mallory O'Meara

Brea Grant and Mallory O'Meara are the co-hosts of Reading Glasses and Reading Smut.

Can you describe your podcast in 10 words or less?
Mallory O’Meara: It's a show about horny books and people who love them.

Smut, or erotica rather, has been around for such a long time. What makes this a lucrative time to talk about it? Why are you making this podcast specifically at this point in time? 
MO: We were seeing, especially with Reading Glasses, how much readers love these books. There's so much shame around these books, even though they are the most popular books right now. These books are getting massive print runs, they're hitting bestseller lists, they're buzzy on TikTok, they're going viral. But still there's this sort of air around them of like, oh, they're trash. They’re guilty pleasures. But, we don't see them as that. We want to treat these books like the important literature that we think they are. There's a lot of really great romance podcasts, but there's not too many that are about smut specifically. The show was Brea’s idea. She was like, why don't we talk about these smutty books?

Brea Grant: I think the origins of it was because we both have a lot of friends who are very intelligent, smart, high-powered people with difficult jobs who were reading a ton of books that were smut or smut adjacent. That got me curious and made me start reading some. I think that we're kind of trying to figure out on the show is like what is interesting about these books at this exact moment for people who might normally read a literary fiction book but are and so are picking up a smut in addition to that or maybe even instead and what is that what is that reflecting in our culture.

SS: If your podcast was a person, how would they dress?
MO: They wouldn't dress. They would be nude. Or perhaps a loincloth? 

BG: Or a nice silk robe.

SS: What was the first smutty book that you both read?
BG: My entrance into the world, which is not like a true smutty book, was Sarah J. Mass books. I think those are the ones that sort of blew up on TikTok, and started a lot of this for a lot of people. 

MO: I've actually been reading romance since I was a teenager. For people who started reading romance really young, I think everyone has their own dealer. For a lot of people, that's a  female family member –a mom, a grandma, an aunt. But, for me it was my friend – Tina. Shoutout Tina! She was and is still very into romance novels, and started letting me borrow them. I don't remember my very first one, but I do remember one that I really, that really hit me. It was The Enchantment by Betina Krahn. 

What’s one thing you learned while making Reading Smut? 
BG: One thing we started to realize was that there were certain books being stigmatized, and that included romance. So, we started picking up more romance and also books that are considered like beach reads or not obviously smart, but considered feminine. So, we started trying to read those books to see why people were saying this. We realized they actually have a lot of good to them.

MO: Reading occupies a very interesting space in the media landscape because it's elevated–elevated above video games, TV, and movies. It’s considered the highest intellectual form of entertainment. I think that's why these books get stigmatized and looked at as trash (and make people mad) because it's reading but it's reading for fun and entertainment. They are not looked at as real books or real literature, because these literary snobs are like, hold on, you're not supposed to be having fun here. What are you doing? That is the antithesis of our ethos.

Today’s ‘smart book’ scene seems to cater to or rather is fueled by people who haven’t read enough fanfiction in their youth. Thoughts?
MO: I think there's a lot of the people who are getting into smut right now are people who have never read fanfiction. They're on TikTok, they're seeing a bunch of people read Sarah J Maas, they're seeing a bunch of people read Horny Fairy books. They're curious. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. More people reading a genre is always fantastic. 

Did making the podcast challenge any of your preconceived notions about the smut and erotica space?
BG: We're still figuring out what the podcast looks like. For us, it is an actual exploration of the genre. Figuring out what it is that appeals to us, and to other people.

MO: We try to pick something a little bit silly. My personal opinions about things have certainly been challenged. We'll go into these books and pick them because of how silly they are. We start reading them and we see that, oh, it's more than the silliness. There is stuff here that is exciting for people– both sexually and non. And it's kind of fun to get my own perceptions challenged. While we were talking about it with Chelsea Devantez, I saw how getting those perceptions challenged can be exciting for listeners. 

Do you have any embarrassing smut-reading moments that you have had yourself that you've never shared with anyone before? 
BG: I remember I was reading a Sarah Kuhn book for Reading Glasses. It was a romance and fantasy book. I had to learn how to shape these conversations without people thinking I'm horny at this exact moment. 

MO: One time I was reading 120 Days of Sodom on a family trip. That's not quite erotica, but it's not not erotica.When a family member asked me– what are you reading? I said it’s about a man on a journey. Which is not incorrect.

BG: If you think about it, most books are about somebody on a journey, you know?

MO: And just how many b**bs they see along the way.

What's one podcast you'd love to be invited as a guest on?
BG: How Did This Get Made.

MO: It would probably be one of the Book Riot podcasts. I've been a Book Riot fan for a really long time and they have a really important place in the development of my literary life. So it would be such an honor to be on any of those shows.

Thanks, Brea and Mallory! Listen to Reading Smut here.