Send us a text Novelist and university professor Joy Castro joins us to discuss Margery Latimer, an all-but-forgotten early 20th century writer whose work has been compared to D.H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, and James Joyce. We’re discussing Latimer’s mind-blowingly brilliant book from 1928, We Are Incredible , as well as Latimer’s fraught friendship with another lost lady of lit, Zona Gale. Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newslet...
Jan 11, 2022•48 min•Season 1Ep. 69
Send us a text We have so many exciting episodes lined up for 2022, but before we surge (ahem!) into the new year, we want to dish about the Once Upon a Time… at Bennington College podcast, share a roundup of other great books we’ve been reading, and give an update from a listener: Brook Ashley, Dare Wright’s godchild and author of Dare Wright and The Lonely Doll , wrote in to share some of her perspectives on Dare’s life. Happy New Year! Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: Lost...
Jan 04, 2022•20 min•Season 1Ep. 68
Send us a text Guest Judith Mackrell’s thrilling 2021 book The Correspondents: Six Women Writers on the Front Lines of World War II sets the stage for our discussion of wartime correspondent Virginia Cowles and her sensational 1941 memoir, Looking for Trouble , which was reissued by Faber this fall. Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit . Email us: Contact — Lost Ladies of Lit Podcast...
Dec 28, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 67
Send us a text It’s the ghosts of Christmas present here with a holiday mini episode featuring the Victorian short story “The Wicked Editor’s Christmas Dream,” a spoof of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Stay safe and Happy Holidays! Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit . Email us: Contact — Lost Ladies of Lit Podcast...
Dec 21, 2021•19 min•Season 1Ep. 66
Send us a text Lucia Berlin has been called one of America's "best kept secrets.” We’ll be discussing Berlin’s engrossing short short story collection A Manual for Cleaning Women , published posthumously in 2015 and soon to be adapted for the screen by Pedro Almodovar. Joining us is a longtime friend of Berlin’s, the inimitable Mimi Pond, a cartoonist, illustrator, and humorist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker , The New York Times , and The Paris Review . Support the show For episodes a...
Dec 14, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 65
Send us a text Kim’s niece Chloe joins us for this mini episode on Esther Averill’s quirky and beloved children’s series Jenny and the Cat Club . In 1954, one of the titles, Jenny’s Birthday Book , was named The New York Times’ Best Children's Book of the Year. Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit . Email us: Contact — Lost Ladies of Lit Podcast...
Dec 07, 2021•12 min•Season 1Ep. 64
Send us a text 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. Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit . Email us: Contact — Lost Ladies of Lit Podca...
Nov 30, 2021•41 min•Season 1Ep. 63
Send us a text There’s always something to be thankful for, and this year, we’re especially thankful for you, our listeners! Join us as we discuss books set during Thanksgiving, and Amy reads aloud from Louisa May Alcott’s charming short story “An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving.” Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit . Email us: Contact — Lost Ladies of Lit Podcast...
Nov 23, 2021•31 min•Season 1Ep. 62
Send us a text Simone de Beauvoir’s lost novella The Inseparables was once deemed “too intimate” to publish. Newly found, it’s been released to great critical acclaim and we have Lauren Elkin, the translator of the UK Penguin Random House edition, with us to discuss the book and its fascinating author. Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit . Email us: Contact — Lost Ladies of Lit Podc...
Nov 16, 2021•40 min•Season 1Ep. 61
Send us a text In last week’s episode we noted that, while at Oxford in the 1920s, author Gertrude Trevelyan was the first woman to be awarded the Newdigate Prize. It was for her 250-line, blank verse poem about a perfectly-preserved young woman from ancient Rome who was discovered during the Italian Renaissance. In this week’s episode, join us as we “dig a little deeper” to find out more about the fascinating true story that inspired Trevelyan’s poem. Support the show For episodes and show note...
Nov 09, 2021•13 min•Season 1Ep. 60
Send us a text Our guest Brad Bigelow’s obsession with obscure books was celebrated in the 2016 New Yorker profile “The Custodian of Forgotten Books.” He joins us to discuss groundbreaking, but now forgotten, English novelist G.E. Trevelyan and her wonderfully bizarre 1932 novel, Appius and Virginia. Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit . Email us: Contact — Lost Ladies of Lit Podcas...
Nov 02, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 59
Send us a text Lost ladies of the supernatural, the terrifying, and the macabre rise from the dead for our spooktacular discussion with Dr. Melanie R. Anderson and Dr. Lisa Kröger, authors of the Bram Stoker Award-winning Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction and hosts of the “Know Fear Cast” podcast. Happy Halloween! Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladi...
Oct 26, 2021•37 min•Season 1Ep. 58
Send us a text New York Times -bestselling author Amy Sohn joins us to discuss the fascinating life of Ida Craddock, a self-taught Victorian sex expert, occultist, and writer of “marriage guides” who was harassed by vice hunter Anthony Comstock. Craddock is just one of the incredible women featured in Sohn’s new book The Man Who Hated Women: Sex, Censorship, and Civil Liberties in the Gilded Age. Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack n...
Oct 19, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 57
Send us a text From Mr. Darcy and billet doux to buzzkill chaperones and dumb cake (it’s a thing), we take a closer look at courtship in the Regency Era and answer the pertinent question, “Would you ever appear on a Regency Era-style dating show?” See if our answers surprise you in this week’s mini. Admit it, though: we already had you at “Mr. Darcy,” didn’t we? Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @...
Oct 12, 2021•21 min•Season 1Ep. 56
Send us a text The eccentric Victorian-era novelist Ouida wrote more than 40 novels and hobnobbed with literary notables such as Robert Browning, Oscar Wilde, and Wilkie Collins. Critic and wit Max Beerbohm called her “one of the miracles of modern literature,” while other critics dubbed her high-society stories “depraved.” We discuss her wildly decadent life and one of her most popular—and equally decadent—novels, Moths . Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com ...
Oct 05, 2021•33 min•Season 1Ep. 55
Send us a text In this week’s mini, Amy and Kim discuss the fascinating life and work of “Lonely Doll” series creator, Dare Wright, whose biography and seemingly innocent children’s books both have dark undertones. Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit . Email us: Contact — Lost Ladies of Lit Podcast...
Sep 28, 2021•23 min•Season 1Ep. 54
Send us a text Emma Wolf, the first American Jewish writer to be published by the most important presses of her time, lived a life of privilege in upper-middle-class San Francisco society at the turn of the 20th century. Sarah Seltzer, executive editor of Lilith Magazine , joins us this week to discuss the once-popular author and her debut novel of 1892, Other Things Being Equal , which tackles “the marriage plot” — with an interfaith twist. Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: L...
Sep 21, 2021•39 min•Season 1Ep. 53
Send us a text Thanks to our incredible guests and our equally incredible listeners, we’re celebrating our one-year anniversary! It’s been a year of fabulous conversation, thrilling book discoveries, a whole lot of laughs, and even some unexpected guests--as you’ll hear about in this mini. We really appreciate all of you who’ve joined us on this journey, and we have many more lost ladies waiting in the wings to meet you! Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Su...
Sep 14, 2021•13 min•Season 1Ep. 52
Send us a text In this week’s episode, our guest is Lucy Scholes, author of the monthly column Re-Covered for The Paris Review and host of the Ourshelves podcast from Virago Press. We discuss Rosamond Lehmann’s wonderful 1927 debut novel, Dusty Answer. Incredibly popular in its day, this book also caused quite the scandal—which we tell you all about, of course! Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @l...
Sep 06, 2021•49 min•Season 1Ep. 51
Send us a text Whether in fiction or in real life, the relationship between literary sisters can range anywhere from the incredibly productive to the—let’s face it—downright psychotic. Join us as we discuss some lesser known literary sisters and reveal next week’s lost lady! Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladiesoflit . Email us: Contact — Lost Ladies of Lit Podcast...
Aug 31, 2021•10 min•Season 1Ep. 50
Send us a text Virginia Woolf wrote that “All women together ought to let flowers fall on the tomb of Aphra Behn… for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” We’ll be letting our metaphorical flowers fall for England’s first professional female writer, Behn, in this episode with guest Dr. Sarah Raff, an associate professor of English at California’s Pomona College. Learn more about the Restoration era author’s progressive views on motherhood, marriage, and sexual politics as ...
Aug 24, 2021•46 min•Season 1Ep. 49
Send us a text Just in time for what’s potentially the most anticipated back-to-school season ever, we go beyond John Knowles’s A Separate Peace and J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye to discuss books by women about boarding schools (and school in general). We also compare what we’ve read with Amy’s real-life all-girls’ Catholic school experience and Kim’s imaginary one. Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on in...
Aug 17, 2021•14 min•Season 1Ep. 48
Send us a text Sisters Jane and Mary Findlater were literary celebrities in their day and counted the likes of Henry James, Virginia Woolf and Rudyard Kipling among their admirers. We’ll be discussing one of their joint efforts, Crossriggs , which is considered their finest work. Joining us are Hollywood screenwriting sisters Julie and Shawna Benson who worked on the CW’s critically-acclaimed series The 100 and Netflix’s Wu Assassins . Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLad...
Aug 10, 2021•44 min•Season 1Ep. 47
Send us a text Think you know everything there is to know about Louisa May Alcott? Test your knowledge on this week’s mini episode as we chat with the hosts of the new Alcott mini-series podcast Let Genius Burn . Jamie and Jill are Alcott experts, and in our conversation they reveal five surprising things you might not know about Little Women ’s famed author. Plus, Jamie will share secrets from her experience as an Orchard House guide, and we’ll clue you in on next week’s Lost Lady of Lit! Suppo...
Aug 03, 2021•23 min•Season 1Ep. 46
Send us a text Edna Ferber’s So Big was the top-selling novel of 1924 and it won a Pulitzer Prize, yet it’s little known now! Wildly popular in its day, So Big was adapted for film three times, the second of which (in 1932) starred Barbara Stanwyck and featured a young Bette Davis in one of her earliest roles. Join us for a discussion of the book and the 1932 film with Dr. Caroline Frick from the Department of Radio-Television-Film at University of Texas, Austin . Support the show For episodes a...
Jul 27, 2021•45 min•Season 1Ep. 45
Send us a text If you love the Golden Age of cinema, this one’s for you! Two of the hosts from the fun new YouTube show Disaster to the Wench join us for this week’s mini episode. A mashup of TV’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 and TCM (Turner Classic Movies), with a twist of Ms. magazine, Disaster to the Wench is a sassy and feminist real-time commentary of classic Hollywood films like Rain starring Joan Crawford and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers starring Barbara Stanwyck. Support the show For...
Jul 20, 2021•15 min•Season 1Ep. 44
Send us a text The Washington Post called Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun “one of a handful of great American plays—it belongs in the inner circle, along with Death of a Salesman , Long Day’s Journey Into Night , and The Glass Menagerie .” Join us as we discuss A Raisin in the Sun and the remarkable life and work of its author with guest Dr. Soyica Diggs Colbert, whose critically-lauded new biography Radical Vision uncovers key details about Hansberry’s activism and contextualizes her i...
Jul 13, 2021•43 min•Season 1Ep. 43
Send us a text Born a generation before Mary Wollstonecraft, seventeenth-century English philosopher Mary Astell wrote the groundbreaking works A Serious Proposal to the Ladies , her plea and plan for the education of women, and an indictment of early modern marriage called Some Reflections upon Marriage. Her work was praised by contemporaries, including Robinson Crusoe author, Daniel Defoe. In this week’s mini episode, find out more about Astell and why we should all know who she is. Support th...
Jul 06, 2021•21 min•Season 1Ep. 42
Send us a text Edith Lewis’s editorial input helped shape Willa Cather’s writing for almost four decades—and for that same length of time, Willa Cather and Edith Lewis were life partners, too. Their relationship was tacitly accepted during their lifetime, only to be erased (along with Lewis’s legacy) in the second half of the 20th century. Join us as we bring Lewis back into the picture with this week’s guest, Dr. Melissa Homestead, author of The Only Wonderful Things: The Creative Partnership o...
Jun 29, 2021•42 min•Season 1Ep. 41
Send us a text If you type “Judith Love Cohen” into your search bar, the headlines about her can be summed up in three words, “Jack Black’s mom.” But did you know she was also a prolific author, an aerospace engineer who helped the Apollo 13 mission, and, for a time, a professional ballerina in New York City? Join us for our latest mini episode, inspired by a meme that sent us down a rabbit hole of amazingness. Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to...
Jun 22, 2021•11 min•Season 1Ep. 40
