Conducted by Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal

In Yesteryear (Knopf, 2026), Instagram tradwife, Natalie Heller Mills, ends up in the 1855 version of her curated life. The novel, by former NOR contributor Caro Claire Burke, tackles themes of agency and authenticity while exploring the impact of spreading traditional cultural values through social media in 21st Century society. It has become one of the most-discussed books of 2026, and NOR is happy to present this interview with Burke, which has been lightly edited for clarity.

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal: To get us started, walk us through the genesis of this novel? Why did you choose to write about tradwife culture?

Caro Claire Burke: I think I became aware of tradwives in the winter of 2024. It just felt like a topic that allows you to talk about everything. You can talk about power, you can talk about gender, you can talk about race. And it’s just so filled with opportunity, but it is also a fiction. Like the idea of a tradwife is a fantasy. It’s a propaganda campaign. I think it was very natural for me to take that and immediately have this knee jerk impulse to write it in fiction, which is an area that I’m more comfortable in than cultural criticism, which I’ve only started engaging with more recently.

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal: Early in the novel, Natalie finds a plastic microphone lapel on the ground of her 1855 life, which leads to paranoia and a belief she is on a reality television show. We won’t spoil the ending here—personally I think the turn is brilliant—but why did you choose to plant this seed of doubt for Natalie so early in the novel?

Caro Claire Burke: It’s so interesting because at the point that I was writing the book, I was not worried about how we would market it. I say that because I never really viewed it as like a time-travel novel. I didn’t worry about breaking that illusion quickly just because it wasn’t something that really interested me. More so, I always knew what the ending was going to be, but I had no clue how I was going to get there because I’ve never written thriller before. In order to just keep writing, I came up with a few red herrings or a few theories. And I knew I had different theories for her to be working with because I wanted there to be some sort of momentum in a time period that is kind of claustrophobic. Most of that section of the book, you’re just in a house with her. I was trying to think about, like, how do I keep from boring myself? How do I keep the plot moving and how do I move towards the ending? So I was really just kind of like zigging and zagging and that was one of the zigs that I came up with.

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal: In the book, there are two aspects of conservative internet culture that are seemingly intertwined. You have the Instagram tradwife and you have the heavy influence of the manosphere. How do you see these cultures complementing one another in your novel and in the world outside your novel?

Caro Claire Burke: So the story obviously centers around tradwives, but something I think about a lot is how that idea centers within other elements of reactionary politics. The manosphere is the inverse of the tradwife world. And all of those ideas are political as much as they are cultural. None of this was really intentional at first. I was just writing in the voice of a woman who is inherently political. Her interiority skews political, and I don’t think she even realizes that. A lot of it was just instinct at first in trying to figure out, you know, what are we doing? But then it was difficult in the editing process, trying not to let in the noise of the outside world. While writing this from 2024 to 2026, we had Joe Biden drop out of the presidency. We had Kamala Harris run for office. We had Donald Trump move from no-way-is-he-going-to-win-the-election-again to winning.

There were so many political moments in America that happened on the periphery that I didn’t want to impact the novel. When I was writing the first draft, it was very instinctive to just follow the political intonations that felt like the atmosphere of this novel. And then in the editing process, it was more like fighting to defend those without overthinking them. Because, again, you worry about the word timely and the whole feeling of: is this going to be too relevant? Are we going to miss the mark? I want this to be a book that can stand the test of time where if someone reads it 20 years from now, it still feels relevant in some way.

It was almost this thing where I couldn’t look it in the eye too much, the politics of the book, because it wasn’t really intentional when I did it. And I didn’t want to overthink anything because this book is very extreme in many ways. I had to trust that it was going to come together without spending too much time getting into the detail.

I mean, it’s almost something where, whenever I talk about it, I feel like I don’t do it justice because it’s also fiction. I believe so strongly that fiction doesn’t owe any allegiance to reality. It’s a different reality in the same way that the internet is a different reality. Like these are all different pairs of universes.

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal: While much of the discussion around the novel has been centered on Natalie and tradwife culture, a significant portion of the novel also explores Natalie’s relationship with her in-laws. Her husband is the son of a U.S. Senator running for president a third time. What do you feel this exploration of national political discourse adds to the novel and its subject matter? What conversation is there to be had around the relationship between politics and the culture of conservative values pushed through social media?

Caro Claire Burke: The most obvious way that it reflects is showing how these ideas about tradwives and the manosphere and these kind of reactionary politics do trickle upwards, so to speak, into actual politics. Like, it is interesting talking about tradwives because I don’t think there’s been a mass exodus of women leaving the workforce to become tradwives. I don’t think that’s happening. But I do think we’ve experienced real-life consequences, like legislative consequences from politicians who believe in these ideas, [the striking down of] Roe v. Wade being the most obvious example. I really wanted Natalie to have a power rival in the book, and I knew it wouldn’t be her husband. I was figuring out who Natalie was, and her husband had to be a little bit softer than her. So Doug [her father-in-law] becomes like her, someone who is worthy of contending with her and vying for control of what is taking place. That felt satisfying in a little bit of an on-the-nose way in that you have a man who is quite literally her husband and not emblematic of traditional masculinity. And that’s intentional. But her father-in-law is. He’s a real archetype of masculinity and also of Americana. He’s got this kind of John Wayne vibe. I liked the idea of having this protagonist or anti-hero or whatever you want to call her who is very symbolic of a certain type of woman, and so is her father-in-law. He’s a very hyperbolic example of the American dream. I liked the idea of making it so on the nose in that way.

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal: In the novel, Natalie takes on a position of authority in her household and in establishing herself as an influencer. Through developing a career that brings in significant income for the family, among other acts, do you see Natalie, in asserting her agency, as a sort of feminist? Does she see herself as a feminist?

Caro Claire Burke: No, I think Natalie engages in certain thought patterns that feminism is to thank for. I think the fact that she wants things and that she has an ambition for a thing and she opens a bank account, these are all feminist acts. But no, I don’t think that doing something and choosing to do it and being able to do it simply because you want to is feminist. I mean, when you think about feminism as an ideology of collective liberation, no, she’s not doing anything for anyone. I think there are plenty of stay-at-home mothers who can be very feminist and who can make many decisions about that. But that’s not what Natalie is.

Also, I don’t know if she’s anti-feminist either. A lot of people tend to live in the middle. The ways in which I would lend my empathy to her from a feminist perspective is that she is really trying to make decisions from within a very constrained world. Some people would say of her and of certain women in these positions, why don’t they just leave? They could leave, you know, she could go. But if you have to burn down your entire life and completely reform your entire understanding of the world, it’s not exactly an easy choice to make. I do think Natalie is forced into a series of smaller and smaller boxes, and it’s up to the reader the extent to which she is even in control of that to begin with. When I was writing the book, my interest came from not really ever knowing how much choice she had. I don’t really know how much agency Natalie has in the book. I’m still working through that myself, where almost every scene, it felt like there was a moment where she was in full control. And then the next scene, I would think, oh, she had no control at all. It’s hard to say where that fits her into the spectrum of feminism.

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal: There are moments through the novel where Natalie seems to question or struggle with the notions of traditional gender roles in the household. At the same time, she struggles with honesty, both internally and in relation to others. Do you feel she ever truly, genuinely believes in the tradwife system of white, Christian family values?

Caro Claire Burke: I don’t think Natalie’s beliefs transfer over into any spiritual level of depth. She believes in these things because she has a very transactional relationship with how to move through the world. To that extent, I think she believes that she has to be married. It’s not an option for her to not be married. She has to have children. A lot of that comes from this almost formulaic understanding of how to be good. How to do things the right way. I don’t think she believes it because she genuinely believes children are better off if we have a husband and a wife in the home and they’re going to have better outcomes or whatever these people claim. Natalie really is a very transactional person. And, essentially, she has been given a rule book, or like a rubric book for how to move through the world. She adheres to that with a punishing rigidity. But I don’t think she’s a spiritual person. I don’t think she’s an emotional person. I don’t think that she makes decisions based off a depth of emotional care.

I think all of her beliefs are kind of inch-deep. That’s what’s so fascinating about her. It’s like she believes in the way that when you’re taught 1 + 1 equals 2. And most people just accept it there where it’s like, okay, 1 + 1 equals 2. I think that’s how Natalie views all of these things where it’s 1 + 1 equals 2. I don’t think she ever goes, well, why? Why would 1 + 1 equal 2? Why couldn’t 1 + 1 ever equal 3? You know what I mean? I don’t get the sense that she ever challenges those beliefs. I think you have to challenge them a little bit in order to come to strong personal conclusions about it.

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal: Your short story in NOR, “homecoming,” touches on some similar ideas as your novel—sexual assault, feminist agency, accountability—albeit in a much different way. Media interviews are employed in both the story and the novel to generate accountability or at least attempt to create accountability. You also host a podcast with Katie Gatti Tassin, Diabolical Lies, that tries to hold larger systems of power to account in issues related to women. What do you feel is the media’s role in creating larger accountability to those in power? And what can we do to create larger change in both politics and culture through literature, podcasts, and other forms of media?

Caro Claire Burke: I think we have media and then we have journalism and those are not the same. That’s worth noting. Journalism and journalists often do incredibly important work, holding powerful people to account. I did an episode about Epstein and the work that local journalists did in Miami, in New York. They were the ones to thank for uncovering anything about Epstein. Everyone else dropped the ball except for local journalists. I don’t think journalism is perfect as it comes to reporting on these gender imbalances. We often see biases within that work.

I think we have a huge media problem. I worked in media for a decade. The incentive structure is just not skewed towards truth. And it’s certainly not skewed towards cultural liberation. It’s skewed towards profit. If you’re a media company, you need to drive clicks nowadays in order to stay afloat. That means you need to feed into misogyny. You need to feed into racism. You need to circle on certain topics far longer than you should. You need to spend time ruminating on the profoundly unimportant. Think about the number of times you will see an article about Taylor Swift versus an article about climate change.

Our immediate ecosystem is not structured to help us hold power to account. It has totally different incentives regardless of how hardworking and intelligent the people in the industry are. And I feel like I see that again and again, both through research for my podcast and, also, just as a person living in the world.

There’s a lot of power and responsibility in independent work. You know, in literature, there is a huge capacity to change people’s minds. There are a lot of incredible independent companies. Defector is a great one that’s employee-owned, and they write great topics. Independent podcasts, like what Katie and I do. I think that when you are no longer beholden to corporate shareholders or advertisers, you get to discuss things with more freedom. So yeah, it concerns me. Our media ecosystem, especially now with algorithmic behavior, leads to echo chambers of misinformation.

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal: What are you currently reading? What is something we should have on our radar?

Caro Claire Burke: I’m really excited for Rachel Aviv’s new essay collection, You Won’t Get Free of It, which I think is coming out very shortly. Whidbey by T. Kira Madden came out this year. That’s a debut novel that I thought was phenomenal. I think that’s a masterpiece. I’m currently reading Alice Winn, who wrote In Memoriam, which is one of my favorite novels. I’m reading her sophomore novel, Worship, which will come out later in the year. And it is astonishingly good. So I love that. I don’t know if you’re allowed to plug old books, but I always read Alice Munro in the summertime. She’s one of the greatest short story writers of all time. I have a house that we don’t always get to go to and it has all of the books that I basically, you know, when you get books and you keep culling until you finally have your collection of books that you just reread over and over again. That’s where I am right now. I’m reading a lot of older books too. I’ve been rereading The Empathy Exams and Alice Munro and that kind of stuff, which is nice too. It’s nice to revisit older works.

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal: What are the biggest influences on your writing, literary or otherwise?

Caro Claire Burke: I mean, so many. I don’t know. I don’t know where Yesteryear will sit in the canon. I think I need someone to tell me what the influences are in that book, because I feel like I’m just still trying to come to terms with it. When you get an MFA, you spend so much time with short stories. So Alice Munro. Donna Tartt. Obviously, Gillian Flynn is like one of the greatest thriller writers. Who else? Ian McEwan is someone I love very much. Atonement is one of the books I’ve read a billion times. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know who influences. I’m trying, I’m like, who am I? What am I and what do I write? I feel like I’ll figure that out on my third novel.

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal: Without giving too much away, is there something you are currently writing you would like to tell us about?

Caro Claire Burke: I’m working on my second novel, but I’m very early in it, so I don’t have much to say. I love a short story, but I’m definitely someone who really loves sinking into a long project. I’m basically always working on a manuscript. I’m now working on my next manuscript. Can confirm: no tradwives.

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal: What is a piece of advice you would like to give to aspiring and emerging writers that you wish you would have been given early in your career?

Caro Claire Burke: I would say rejection is a feature and not a bug. It never stops. I am dealing with my own countless private rejections over the last year, and I am experiencing the lottery ticket of debut novel releases. So, rest assured, it never ends and it is part of the process. It’s not something that you overcome. It’s not just something you just have to survive and get through. No, you have to experience rejection. You just have to get used to that feeling because I think that it is a partner to success and also a partner to the feeling of getting better at what you do. So that is something I think I have learned really foundationally this year where all of my dreams have come true and I still have those voices in my head. I still see critical reviews of my book. I still get emails that say this didn’t work out or that didn’t work out. I’m learning that it really is a lifelong practice. That’s what it means to do art. The more comfortable you get with it and fast, the better off you’ll be.

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Caro Claire Burke is a novelist and cultural critic whose work interrogates the influence of media and the evolving narratives of modern womanhood. Her debut novel, Yesteryear, a #1 New York Times bestseller. Burke received her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and has been writing fiction for over a decade. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. (adapted from Penguin Random House)

Clayton Bradshaw-Mittal (they/them) writes queer, working-class poetry and prose. Winner of the Plaza Short Story Prize, their creative work can be found in Story, Third Coast, The Masters Review, Fairy Tale Review, F(r)iction, Hole in the Head Review, and elsewhere. They are the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology at Sundress Publications. (adapted from https://writerclaytonbradshaw.com/)