For this year’s Ladino Day celebration, acclaimed fantasy author Leigh Bardugo (“Shadow and Bone”) will discuss her new novel, “The Familiar,” which features a Sephardic Jewish heroine in 16th-century Spain who draws magical powers from her family’s secret language, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish).

The event will be offered both in person on the University of Washington campus, in Kane Hall 210, and livestreamed as a webinar. It will be followed by a public book-signing with Bardugo in the Walker-Ames Room of Kane Hall.

About the event

In this event, author Leigh Bardugo will discuss her new novel, “The Familiar,” and its use of Ladino (Judeo-Spanish)  with UW faculty member Canan Bolel, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures.

In the novel, Bardugo follows the struggles of a “converso” heroine — from a family forced to convert to Christianity and keep its Jewish heritage secret in 16th-century Spain — who draws magic from her family’s secret language, Ladino, and the refranes (sayings) that preserve Sephardic Jewish wit and wisdom across time.

In the conversation, Bardguo will discuss what drew her to this story and setting, how she wove Ladino into her narrative, the family history that inspired her, and the collaboration with Bolel that led to the selection of refranes included in the book.

The conversation will be followed by a public book-signing event in the Walker-Ames Room of Kane Hall. Books will be available to purchase on-site through the UW Bookstore.

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About the speakers

Leigh Bardugo is the New York Times bestselling author of “The Familiar” and “Ninth House,” and is the creator of the Grishaverse (now a Netflix original series) which spans the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, the King of Scars duology. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies. She lives in Los Angeles and is an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University.

Canan Bolel is a historian of the Ottoman Empire’s Jewish communities and is an assistant professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. Her first book project, “Constructions of Jewish Modernity and Marginality in Izmir, 1860–1907,” explores how Sephardic Jews constituted their identities in imperial and communal settings, focusing on marginalized Jews — the diseased, criminals, and converts to Christianity. She teaches courses on Ladino every year at the UW, and consulted on the use of Ladino in “The Familiar.”

This event is supported by the Lucie Benveniste Kavesh Endowed Fund for Sephardic Studies.