Hello friends,Welcome to a new weekend, a new month and a brand new season of the Austen Connection podcast, back right now with this episode! Kicking off our third season of the Austen Connection podcast is author Nikki Payne - a novelist, tech anthropologist, and cultural observer in all things.Dr. Payne deploys her PhD in Anthropology for her day-job as a tech anthropologist at Facebook while her love for romance, story, and Jane Austen fanfic has burgeoned into a second career: novelist. Payne’s Jane Austen remix Pride and Protest is due out November 15th, with a second novel remixing Sense and Sensibility also forthcoming. In Pride and Protest, a remix of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet is revisioned as DJ Liza B, who is protesting a major development by a major developer named … Dorsey Fitzgerald. We see where this is going!Nikki Payne says her favorite romances involve two people coming together across racial, ideological, and cultural divides - and that’s what makes a slow-burning and burgeoning connection intensely exciting. In this conversation Payne talks with us about how the stories we tell - our “cultural production” - shape our view of our history, our desire, our lives, and our world. Here’s our conversation with Nikki Payne - on how Anne Elliot is a boiling cauldron, Emma is a mess (but we love her anyway), Shakespeare’s original hate-to-love romance, and how writing romance across boundaries can shape and change the world. Oh yes, and how for Nikki Payne the “classy, bougie, ratchet” vibe of musician Megan Thee Stallion is all about paying the bills, meeting and defying expectations, and navigating your way through to your own brand of desire and style - and all of that is so very Jane Austen.Enjoy! Cool links and community:Find out more about Nikki Payne’s Pride and Protest and sign up for her newsletter here.You can also preorder Pride and Protest here, (preordering a book is one of the best things you can do to support it!) and you can engage with Nikki Payne’s smart cultural fun on Twitter and Instagram. Historian Gretchen Gerzina is the author of many books and a BBC series excavating the stories of Black lives in British history. Here’s her website. Oh - and she also has been a guest on this Austen Connection podcast episode. Abigail Rigaud, who Nikki Payne refers to in this conversations, writes as Heather Lynn Rigaud: https://austeninterlude.com/hl/hl.html]Also mentioned in this conversation is Bookhoarding by Bianca Hernandez-Knight, who also produces the marvelous VirtualJaneCon.If you enjoyed this conversation and episode, go ahead and give it a five-star review! Get full access to The Austen Connection at austenconnection.substack.com/subscribe