Inventing Granny MacDuff: Kristin Verbitsky Channels Creativity Into Pair of Podcasts

It is easy to imagine Granny MacDuff pulling on her purple cardigan, straightening her circular spectacles, perhaps taking a sip of tea and opening her book of fairy tales.

“Make yourselves comfy and I’ll begin,” she says to her young listeners in a soothing British accent, her fireplace crackling in the background. “Once upon a time …”

What comes next are the adventures of princesses and princes, stories of fairies and gnomes, tales of giants and witches and animals big and small. But, in real life, the woman behind them is far from a grandmother — and rather the creative mind of 37-year-old Kristin Verbitsky.

The vivid imagination of the writer and producer of “Fairy Tales with Granny MacDuff” dates back to her childhood split between New York City and Bridgehampton, she said, not far from where she now lives in North Haven with her French bulldog, Dexter.

“How I come up with them,” she said of the stories, “I really think maybe I’m just 10 years old at heart.”

Growing up, Verbitsky split her time between weekends on the East End, where the equestrian regularly practiced for competitions, and attending The Chapin School in Manhattan. When she was about 7 years old, she brought her first short story into class and asked her teacher for honest feedback.

“I was, like, ‘Can you read it and tell me your thoughts?’ I mean, literally, I wanted to know,” she said. “It was almost like, as soon as I could write, I just wanted to write little short stories. So I’ve always been very creative.”

Verbitsky went on to earn her bachelor’s degree in film and art history at the University of Miami, followed by a master’s in dramatic writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She wrote a couple of short films and had started to pivot toward directing, she said, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

As it turned out, just a few months earlier, she had founded Storic Media, a division of United Stations Radio Networks, with the directive to start producing podcasts. And so, she reprioritized and hit the ground running.

“I just said, ‘I can do that,’” she said. “So I started there and I was supposed to find podcasts and find people and all of that, and I just decided I wanted to do a show for kids.”

Though her parenting experience is limited to looking after Dexter, she was inspired by watching some of her friends, who have children, and their struggle to read the same bedtime story over and over after a long day — which is where Granny MacDuff could come in, she said.

“And then also I realized, every kid should have a grandma and not everybody does,” she said. “But Granny MacDuff, to me, she’s kind of this universal grandma and she’ll read you a bedtime story.”

The podcast, which launched in March 2020, releases a new fairy tale every Monday. Some are sourced from classic stories in the public domain — “You see them in 500 shapes and forms, from Disney to a collection of fairy tales to the straight translations of Grimm’s,” Verbitsky said — but edited and reimagined, bringing them into the 21st century with far less violence and religious overtones, she said.

Others, she said, are all her own.

“To be honest, if I’m not writing a classic, which I’m doing less and less these days, I’m writing totally original stories,” she said.

Young listeners have latched onto her new characters, with several installments each of the Little Pirate Crab’s adventures and the “Philippe & the Princess” saga, which will have a new story come fall, she said.

But as for what happens, her audience will just have to wait to see what the writer comes up with next.

“I had a story, ‘Cedric the Snail,’ and I just thought about, from the point of view of a snail, what is it like just to cross over a walkway?” she said. “It’s, I guess, very random thoughts coming from the mind of a writer.”

The inspiration behind her second podcast, “Detective Dexter,” is quite clear — modeled off a fictional version of Verbitsky’s own world. It involves her former SoHo apartment, the fire escape that was next to her terrace and, of course, her eponymous pooch.

“I would always just laugh because I would wonder, when I’m going out to work or whatever, what is he doing?” she said of Dexter. “And how funny would it be that the dog was a detective and he’s hopping onto the fire escape and taking meetings?”

When “Fairy Tales with Granny MacDuff” gained traction — the award-winning podcast’s downloads are well into the millions — she decided to take a chance on Dexter.

And, so far, it’s a success.

Tapping her dog’s inquisitive personality — “We actually call him ‘The General’ because he has to know everything that’s going on,” Verbitsky said — she created a character that young listeners seem to love so far. They follow detective-hat-wearing Dexter through the streets of New York City with his food-obsessed sidekick, a Pomeranian named Peanut, as they solve mysteries by day and play pets by night.

This summer, the dynamic duo spent four episodes solving a case in Sag Harbor — looking into the sabotage of the squirrels’ nut stash — before returning to the big city to help marmosets at the American Museum of Natural History.

For the first time, “Detective Dexter” is in the running for a People’s Choice Podcast Award in the “Kids & Family” category, which “Fairy Tales with Granny MacDuff” won in 2020, Verbitsky said, and has been nominated for every year since. She is working on building the Granny MacDuff brand through a Patreon membership, books and merchandise, she said, and both podcasts are also available on YouTube Kids.

“We’re really focusing on education,” she said, “and promoting creativity and imagination.”

Last Monday night, Verbitsky planned to sit down to write the next “Detective Dexter” episode — “He is gonna go to the U.S. Open,” she said — from her home in North Haven, likely with her favorite pup by her side.

“He’s 12 — he’s kind of an OG Frenchie of New York City,” she said. “He rules the roost. He knows when it’s dinner time. He’s been preparing earlier and earlier each day, which I’ve been dealing with. He’s, I hope, a very happy dog. This whole show thing, he says it’s fine, but you know, ‘Don’t bother me. I’m a celebrity now, I need my space.’”