Send us a text What if we told you that there was an ingenious retelling of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights set in post-war Japan that also has shades of Middlemarch and The Great Gatsby ? Minae Mizumura’s A True Novel , first published in 2002, checks all those boxes and more. Joining us to discuss A True Novel is Lavanya Krishnan, co-founder of the literary book subscription Boxwalla. (This episode originally aired in 2023). Discussed in this episode: A True Novel by Minae Mizumura Lavanya Kr...
Aug 05, 2025•29 min•Ep. 256
Send us a text Woman yearns for child, adopts orangutan instead. Disaster ensues. That's the premise of Gertrude Trevelyan's wonderfully bizarre 1932 novel, Appius and Virginia. We're joined in this encore episode by guest Brad Bigelow, whose obsession with obscure books was celebrated in the 2016 New Yorker profile “The Custodian of Forgotten Books.” Discussed in this episode: Appius and Virginia by G.E. Trevelyan Every Which Way But Loose (1978 Film) Black Mirror The Twilight Zone NeglectedBoo...
Jul 22, 2025•42 min•Ep. 254
Send us a text Else Jerusalem’s Red House Alley is a riveting exposé of the sex industry in fin-de-siècle Vienna. A bestseller upon its 1909 publication, the novel was banned by the Nazis in 1933 (along with its 1928 film adaptation) and fell into obscurity. Boiler House Press published the first full English translation of this landmark work last year, and translator Stephanie Gorrell Ortega joins us to discuss Jerusalem’s richly-drawn account of brothel workers (based on accounts from real pro...
Jul 08, 2025•44 min•Ep. 252
Send us a text When Edna O’Brien published her debut novel The Country Girls in 1960, she was branded a “Jezebel” in her native Ireland—but that didn’t stop her from completing a poignant trilogy about a pair of friends coming of age in a world for which village life and convent school failed to prepare them. Despite initial backlash to her sexually frank depiction of young women’s lives and desires, O’Brien’s writing brought her acclaim and celebrity status— Vanity Fair dubbed her “the playgirl...
Jun 24, 2025•43 min
Send us a text If Brigid Brophy’s The King of a Rainy Country had a soundtrack, it might include the soft patter of rain on a garret window, jazz drifting from a smoky cafe, the hum of a Vespa on narrow cobblestone streets … and the obnoxious griping of a few dozen uncultured Americans! As the description suggests, Brophy’s 1956 novel has a little bit of everything — atmosphere, nostalgia and poignancy mixed with subversive wit and madcap antics. Kim and Amy play “tour guide” examining Brophy’s ...
Jun 10, 2025•28 min•Ep. 248
Send us a text Langston Hughes called Jessie Redmon Fauset “the midwife of the Harlem Renaissance” with good reason. As literary editor at The Crisis magazine from 1919 until 1926, Fauset discovered and championed some of the most important Black writers of the early 20th century. Her own novels contributed to The New Negro Movement’s cultural examination of race, class and gender through the lens of women’s experiences. Fauset’s 1928 novel Plum Bun was republished this spring by Quite Literally...
May 27, 2025•47 min•Ep. 246
Send us a text Dastardly villains are no match for Capitola Black, the audacious heroine at the center of E.D.E.N. Southworth’s 1859 bestseller, The Hidden Hand. Readers so admired this literary tomboy’s pluck that Capitola became a popular baby name for decades and inspired the name of a California town. Yet few readers today are familiar with Southworth, one of the highest-earning authors of her day (to whom Louisa May Alcott even gave a subtle nod in Little Women ). Rose Neal, author of a bra...
May 13, 2025•43 min•Ep. 244
Send us a text F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby may be the novel everyone’s talking about this month, but let’s not forget another “Jazz Age” novel that took this country by storm. Ursula Parrott’s Ex-Wife , a tragicomic indictment of early 20th-century romance, brought the author immense fame and wealth at the time of its publication in 1929. Yet by her death in 1957 she was penniless and homeless, a fate she all but predicted in the cautionary commentary of her writing. Our episode on Pa...
Apr 29, 2025•53 min•Ep. 242
Send us a text Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Not the heroines from Angela Carter’s 1979 short story collection The Bloody Chamber. The British author tackles dark, primal themes in her spin on classic fables and fairy tales, urging women to eschew victimhood, reclaim their power and bite back! Join us as we dive into this enchanted world of blood, sex and animal magnetism, and find out how Carter’s own life experiences may have prompted her to peel back the skin on tropes of subjugation. Men...
Apr 15, 2025•31 min•Ep. 240
Send us a text When Lucy Irvine answered a classified ad to play Girl Friday to a real-life Robinson Crusoe on a remote tropical island, she embarked on an enthralling—and at times harrowing—year-long adventure. The result was her bestselling 1983 memoir, Castaway, a beautifully-written tale of survival. We’re diving into Irvine’s unforgettable story with special guest Francesca Segal, whose own island-centric novel, Welcome to Glorious Tuga, was recently optioned for TV by See-Saw Films. Mentio...
Apr 01, 2025•37 min•Ep. 238
Send us a text Religious mystics Margery of Kempe and Julian of Norwich lived in close proximity to one another in time and place, yet the lives of these two medieval women couldn’t have been more different. One traveled the world in relentless pursuit of spiritual validation, while the other withdrew into a walled cell. One boldly proclaimed her visions of Christ while the other recorded quiet revelations. One authored the first autobiography in English while the other penned the first known bo...
Mar 18, 2025•47 min•Ep. 236
Send us a text How do you engage with others in a polarized society? Early 19-century writer and freethinker Frances “Fanny” Wright offers an ostensible how-to manual in the witty didactic novel she penned at age 19, A Few Days in Athens. Wright’s radical ideas garnered her the praise of Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette and Walt Whitman, to name a few, but detractors dubbed her “The Red Harlot of Infidelity.” Tristra Yeager and Eleanor Rust, hosts of the 2024 podcast “Frances Wright: A...
Mar 04, 2025•41 min•Ep. 234
Send us a text One hundred years ago this week, The New Yorker published its first issue. A few months later, the magazine’s first (and for decades, only ) female editor joined the staff. Katharine S. White spent the better part of the next 50 years wielding her pen and her editorial influence there, carefully tending to an ever-growing stable of talented (sometimes high-maintenance) writers and shaping the magazine into a cultural powerhouse. Biographer Amy Reading joins us to discuss White’s l...
Feb 18, 2025•48 min•Ep. 232
Send us a text January was dismal, but we’re distracting ourselves with something shiny in this first new full-length episode of the year. Catbird Chief Creative Officer Leigh Batnick Plessner joins us to explore three works by women writers, each of whom used jewelry as a powerful storytelling device. Louise de Vilmorin, Maria Edgeworth and Dorothy Parker feature diamond earrings, friendship bracelets and a pearl necklace, respectively, to reflect the deepest desires and ambitions of the charac...
Feb 04, 2025•38 min•Ep. 230
Send us a text If you’re drawn to the hefty tomes of Victorian authors Anthony Trollope and George Eliot, we can pretty much guarantee you’ll enjoy this week’s novel, Hester , as much as we did. Margaret Oliphant is said to have been one of Queen Victoria’s favorite novelists, and she counted J.M. Barrie and Robert Louis Stevenson among her many fans. Joining us to discuss Hester is New York Times columnist and pediatrician Dr. Perri Klass. Discussed in this episode: Hester by Margaret Oliphant ...
Jan 21, 2025•45 min•Season 1Ep. 228
Send us a text In this week's hiatus replay, we’re focusing on one of Ukraine’s best-known poets and playwrights, Laryssa Kosach, who wrote under the pen name Lesya Ukrainka. Her play The Forest Song is a masterpiece of Ukrainian drama. Discussed in this episode: The Forest Song by Lesya Ukrainka Looking for Trouble by Virginia Cowles Lost Ladies of Lit episode on Virginia Cowles’ Looking for Trouble Invisible Battalion (2017 documentary) “Ukraine Isn’t Part of Little Russia” (KCRW) Executed Ren...
Jan 07, 2025•16 min
Send us a text Novelist and university professor Joy Castro returns to the show to discuss the 1952 novel Forbidden Notebook by Cuban-Italian writer Alba de Cespedes. In a New York Times review of a 1958 English edition of this novel, de Céspedes was called “one of the few distinguished women writers since Colette to grapple effectively with what it is to be a woman.” Discussed in this episode: Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes Her Side of the Story by Alba de Céspedes Muriel Rukeyser poem ...
Dec 24, 2024•49 min•Season 1Ep. 124
Send us a text At the age of eight, Gertrude Simmons Bonnin (later known by her pen name Zitkála-Šá) left her Yankton Dakota reservation to attend a missionary boarding school for Native Americans, a harsh and abusive experience about which she eventually wrote a series of articles published in The Atlantic Monthly . Jessi Haley, editorial director of Cita Press (which just published a free anthology of the author’s work) joins Yankton Dakota poet Erin Marie Lynch to discuss how Zitkála-Šá’s sen...
Dec 10, 2024•43 min•Ep. 122
Send us a text Charmed by her friend Lewis Carroll’s children’s book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , Victorian poet Christina Rossetti followed suit nearly a decade later with her own children’s book — one that alludes to the “Alice” tale while also offering a more clear-eyed view of girls’ duties, even in topsy-turvy dream worlds. Ayana Christie, Chief Product Officer of Bond & Grace, joins us for a discussion this week on Rossetti’s 1874 work Speaking Likenesses and helps us draw compar...
Nov 26, 2024•39 min•Ep. 220
Send us a text Margaret Drabble’s 1965 novel The Millstone offers a nuanced portrayal of single motherhood in 1960s London. Author Carrie Mullins, whose 2024 nonfiction work The Book of Mothers explores literary depictions of motherhood, joins us to discuss Drabble’s fearless protagonist, Rosamund. Together, we explore how The Millstone captures the joys and burdens of motherhood, and how Drabble’s sharp, ahead-of-its-time portrayal speaks to contemporary readers. Mentioned in this episode: The ...
Nov 12, 2024•37 min•Season 1Ep. 218
Send us a text Elizabeth Garver Jordan’s riveting coverage of the Lizzie Borden trial for The New York World captivated true-crime junkies of the late 19th-century, and her lengthy career as a journalist, fiction writer and literary editor still resonates today. Lori Harrison-Kahan and Jane Carr, editors of a brand new collection of Garver Jordan’s work, join us this week to discuss her courtroom dispatches, her connection to today’s #MeToo movement and how her “invisible labor” shaped the writi...
Oct 29, 2024•41 min•Ep. 216
Send us a text Growing up on the Great Plains and witnessing the struggles of migrant workers in California made Sanora Babb uniquely qualified to write the story of the Dust Bowl. Her novel Whose Names Are Unknown was slated for publication by Random House in 1939 until The Grapes of Wrath beat her book to the punch. John Steinbeck actually used Babb’s notes and research to write his Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, but did he get the story right? Iris Jamahl Dunkle, author of a new biography on B...
Oct 15, 2024•44 min•Ep. 214
Send us a text Details of Eliza Haywood’s life may be murky today, but in the early 18th century, she was a literary force—writing plays and bestselling novels, editing periodicals, and ruffling the feathers of male contemporaries like Alexander Pope. Academic Kelly J. Plante joins us this week to discuss Haywood’s anonymous wartime writing for The Female Spectator , the first periodical written by and for women, as well as her 1751 novel, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless. Mentioned in this...
Oct 01, 2024•35 min•Ep. 212
Send us a text Long before 'Brat Summer,' America was taken with Mary MacLane, a defiant and wildly egotistical 19-year-old resident of Butte, Montana, whose confessional diary implored the “kind devil” to deliver her from a life of bourgeois boredom. Professor Cathryn Halverson from Sweden’s Södertörn University joins us for this episode to discuss MacLane’s life, angst and the reading public’s reaction to her adolescent intensity. Mentioned in this episode: I Await the Devil’s Coming/The Story...
Sep 17, 2024•33 min•Season 1Ep. 210
Send us a text HIATUS ENCORE: Anne Zimmerman, author of the 2011 biography An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher , joins us to discuss Fisher and her World War II-era book How to Cook a Wolf, which was an attempt to teach people how to eat well and be well amidst personal and collective chaos. Discussed in this episode: An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher by Anne Zimmerman How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher Lost Ladies of Lit episode on Peg Bracke...
Sep 10, 2024•41 min•Season 1Ep. 209
Send us a text As Berlin bureau chief for The Chicago Tribune from 1925-1941, Sigrid Schultz deflected both sexism and danger to report the truth and speak truth to power. The Nazis dubbed her “that dragon from Chicago,” and her importance as an indomitable “newspaperman” (her term) telling Americans about the Third Reich's agenda can’t be understated. Amy speaks this week with Pamela Toler, the author of a new biography on Schultz’s life, work and lasting legacy. Mentioned in this episode: The ...
Sep 03, 2024•45 min•Ep. 208
Send us a text HIATUS ENCORE: Sisters Jane and Anna Maria Porters’ books took Regency-era England by storm just a few years ahead of Jane Austen, and their lives were chock-full of fascinating (and insufferable) characters, intriguing romantic escapades, event-filled interludes at the homes of wealthy acquaintances and desperate gambits to stay one step ahead of the poverty line. Joining us is ASU Regents Professor of English, Devoney Looser, whose new book is Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing ...
Aug 27, 2024•45 min•Season 1Ep. 207
Send us a text HIATUS ENCORE: Zora Neale Hurston’s 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God is widely considered to be a masterpiece, yet were it not for a renewed push by author Alice Walker in the 1970s, Hurston and her legacy might well have been lost. We have Melissa Kiguwa, host of The Idealists podcast, joining us to discuss Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters . Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on inst...
Aug 13, 2024•43 min•Season 1Ep. 205
Send us a text Did you know that Noel Streatfeild’s 1936 children’s book Ballet Shoes is based on her earlier novel The Whicharts , a tawdrier and not-for-children “shadow twin” that was published five years prior? Find out why it’s our favorite of the two in this week’s episode with our guest, author and bookstagrammer Wendy-Marie Chabot. Discussed in this week’s episode: Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild The Whicharts by Noel Streatfeild Little Dancer Aged 14 by Edgar Degas Marie van Goethem Wa...
Jul 30, 2024•45 min•Season 1Ep. 203
Send us a text Pack your steamer trunks! We’re traveling to 19th-century Bavaria this week by way of Ann Schlee’s 1980 historical novel Rhine Journey , newly republished by McNally Editions. This Booker-Prize nominated travel tale features vivid period details, sultry psychological thrills and a protagonist on the brink of a personal revolution, all sewn up in a vibe that reads like a German twist on “ A Room With a View .” Author Sam Johnson-Schlee joins us to discuss the life and work of his g...
Jul 16, 2024•34 min•Season 1Ep. 201
