The Radical Politics of Grimdark

An article in the Guardian in 2016 summarized what grimdark’s “domination” of the fantasy genre as a “commercial imperative to win adolescent, male readers” in opposition to “a truly epic and more emotionally nuanced kind of fantasy” that delivered storytelling. Many grimdark writers and readers, however, would argue that this description is the very antithesis of the genre. Our panel will discuss the radical political and narrative complexity of grimdark fantasy.