Subscriber-only episode Send us a Text Message. Things get weird on the show this week as Amy and Kim commune with some ladies of literature from beyond the veil… with a little bit of help from ChatGPT. Check out our “interview” with Restoration-era author and playwright Aphra Behn, then find out what happens when we play around with prompts for Vi…

Send us a Text Message. You may think you’ve never read anything by Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter, but if you’ve read any Thomas Mann, there’s a good chance you’ve seen her handiwork. Lowe-Porter was a writer and translator whose greatest (but largely unsung) success came in the form of translating 22 monumental works by the German literary giant. Her En…

Subscriber-only episode Send us a Text Message. Writers Carson McCullers and W.H. Auden, literary editor George Davis, composer Benjamin Britten and burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee... once upon a time they all lived together in a house in Brooklyn Heights, an early 1940s version of the sitcom "Friends," only this one populated by an ever-changing mix…

Send us a Text Message. Guest Carrie Courogen, author of the acclaimed new bio "Miss May Does Not Exist," joins us to discuss comic genius Elaine May. Known for her groundbreaking work in comedy, screenwriting, directing, and acting, May rose to fame as part of the iconic comedy duo Nichols and May. Despite her significant contributions to films li…

Subscriber-only episode Send us a Text Message. Marcel Duchamp created one of the most influential works of art in the 20th century. Or did he? There are some who theorize that a woman — “proto-punk” poet and Dada-ist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven — is the true genius behind the groundbreaking “Fountain” urinal sculpture that rocked the art world in…

Send us a Text Message. In this special catch-up episode, we take a breather to share updates and insights from our recent reads, including works by Sylvia Townsend Warner and Radclyffe Hall. Amy introduces a quirky new business idea inspired by silent disco and Shakespeare, and we invite listeners to text feedback using a new ‘text us’ feature. Pl…

Subscriber-only episode Send us a Text Message. Inspired by Barbara Comyns, who lived with an unusual assortment of pets over the years, this bonus episode explores female authors who owned pet monkeys. Amy discusses Virginia Woolf and her Nazi-disarming marmoset Mitz, Nellie Bly’s fez-wearing travel companion, McGinty, and other primates who captu…

Send us a Text Message. Barbara Comyns was recently called, “the best English novelist you’ve never heard of” and her unsettling gothic novels are equal parts enchanting and horrific. Joining us is Avril Horner, author of "Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence," who offers insight into Comyns' unique blend of dark humor and her empathetic portrayals o…

Subscriber-only episode Send us a Text Message. Inspired by watching Caitlin Clark play in this year’s NCAA tournament, Amy is feeling uncharacteristically “sporty” in this week’s bonus episode. She’ll dive into the history of Ina Eloise Young, America’s first female sports editor at a daily newspaper whose coverage of the 1908 World Series so impr…

Send us a Text Message. Dying by suicide shortly after her novel, Love and Silence, was rejected for publication in 1963, Egyptian writer Enayat al-Zayyat gained brief recognition when the book was finally published four years after her death. Discovering the novel in a Cairo market some 30 years later launched acclaimed Egyptian writer Iman Mersal…

Subscriber-only episode Send us a Text Message. Have you ever wanted to hit the “pause” button on your life and simply start over? In 2022, Anne Boyd Rioux did just that, making the bold and audacious decision to leave her job as a tenured English professor, sell all her earthly possessions and embark on a European adventure. In this episode, Anne …

Send us a Text Message. An eyewitness to monumental moments in the 20th century, author Kay Boyle hung out with Left Bank artists and literary giants, chronicled the ravages of WWII, was blacklisted in the 1950s and was jailed for her Haight-Ashbury activism in the late 1960s. An intrepid modernist committed to a “Revolution of the Word,” this two-…

Subscriber-only episode Send us a Text Message. In this episode Amy explores the history of the 19th-century dance craze that made political leaders nervous, religious leaders aghast, dance instructors insecure and the masses primed for revolt! From Johann Strauss Jr.'s "pop star" status to popular representations in film, we're covering everything…

Send us a Text Message. In this week’s episode Kim and Amy discuss the life and work of “Speranza,” a.k.a Lady Jane Wilde, a.k.a. Oscar Wilde’s mom! An outspoken, rabble-rousing poet who championed Irish independence, she stirred up members of the Young Ireland movement while writing for Dublin’s radical newspaper “The Nation” in the 1840s. Oscar m…

Send us a Text Message. In our first-ever "Game Show Edition" of the podcast, McNally Editions editor Lucy Scholes joins us for a lightning-round quiz pitting quotations from Elizabeth Taylor the actress vs. Elizabeth Taylor the author! Test your knowledge and join in the fun! For the full forty-minute episode in which we discuss the author Taylor'…

Subscriber-only episode Send us a Text Message. FULL LENGTH EDITION!!! In our first-ever "Game Show Edition" of the podcast, McNally Editions editor Lucy Scholes joins us to talk about the TWO Elizabeth Taylors! Lucy collaborated with Pushkin Press Classics on the short story collection A Different Sound, in which midcentury British novelist and sh…

Send us a Text Message. Get ready to fall hopelessly in love with Emilie Loring, a New England native whose prolific output of richly-detailed romance novels feature the sort of charming characters and snappy dialogue reminiscent of films like The Philadelphia Story and It Happened One Night. Loring’s 30 years of commercial success continued long a…

Subscriber-only episode Send us a Text Message. Fasten on those Harry Winston jewels! With Oscar night approaching, Patreon members get “red carpet” access as Amy takes a look back at some of the films honored by the Academy over the decades which were written (or co-written) by women. Women’s representation in screenwriting categories at the Oscar…

Send us a Text Message. Blogger, podcaster and consultant for the British Library Women Writers series Simon Thomas returns to the show to discuss Angela Milne’s 1942 novel One Year’s Time. The book follows a year in the life of a 1930s-era “bachelor girl” named Liza who lives in London. Milne, the niece of Winnie the Pooh author A.A. Milne, was a …

Subscriber-only episode Send us a Text Message. In this bonus episode, Amy follows the clues to learn more about writer Anna Katharine Green (a.k.a "The Mother of the Detective Novel") whose late 19th-century mysteries inspired the likes of Agatha Christie and last week's "lost lady," Carolyn Wells. Green's 1878 debut novel The Leavenworth Case was…

Send us a Text Message. A pioneer of the detective/mystery genre who began writing locked-room mystery novels a decade before Agatha Christie, Carolyn Wells was a turn-of-the-twentieth century celebrity who counted Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, and Mark Twain among her many famous friends and fans. Guest Rebecca Rego Barry, whose new book is T…

Subscriber-only episode Send us a Text Message. In this bonus episode, Amy reflects on a recent trip to the Winchester Mystery House, an architecturally-unusual mansion in San Jose, California which helped inspired Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. In addition to exploring the life of Sarah Winchester and her legendary home, Kim and Amy…

Send us a Text Message. Zelda Fitzgerald is known as “the first American flapper” and an icon of the Jazz Age, but you may be surprised to learn that beneath the glittering facade, there was substance—and literary talent. Her sole published novel, “Save Me the Waltz,” is a poignant blend of beauty and biography that draws on her complex personal na…

Send us a Text Message. As Merchant Ivory super fans, we were surprised (and chagrined!) that we’d been unaware of Ismael Merchant and James Ivory’s longtime collaborator, novelist and Academy Award winning-screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. Hollywood screenwriter Brigitte Hales joins us to discuss Jhabvala and her Booker Prize-winning 1975 novel, …

Send us a Text Message. New full-length episodes beginning Jan. 30. 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 e…

Send us a Text Message. Published anonymously six years prior to Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park—yet largely ignored for two centuries—the Regency-era epistolary novel The Woman of Colour: A Tale is the only one of its kind to feature a racially-conscious Black heroine at its center. Dr. Leigh-Michil George, a lecturer in the English Department at Gef…

Send us a Text Message. New episodes beginning January 30. Ready for some Edwardian Era YA? Set in Minnesota at the turn of the 20th century, Maud Hart Lovelace’s delightful Besty-Tacy series is closely based on the author’s idyllic midwestern childhood. In this week’s episode we’re discussing the four books that span Betsy’s high school years (190…

Send us a Text Message. Back with new episodes on January 30. 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…

Send us a Text Message. We’re back January 30, 2024 with all new episodes. Did you know there was a controversial, now-forgotten 1888 novel written in response to George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda by a writer who has been described as “the Jewish Jane Austen?” Until recently, neither did we. Join us as we talk with Dr. Ann Kennedy Smith about author Am…

Send us a Text Message. We’re back January 30, 2024 with all new episodes. 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 u…

Send us a Text Message. We're back with all new episodes on Jan. 30, 2024. Join us for a wonderfully funny and poignant conversation about life, death, and motherhood with award-winning writer Hilma Wolitzer. Her short stories, most of them originally appearing in magazines in the 1960s and 1970s, were re-discovered by her daughter, bestselling aut…

Send us a Text Message. Join us as we discuss Mary McCarthy’s best-known work, The Group, published in 1963. An instant hit, it remained on the New York Times bestseller list for two years and follows eight friends over the course of seven years following their graduation from Vassar College in 1933. It was banned in Australia, Ireland, and Italy f…

Send us a Text Message. In this week’s bonus episode, we dig into the poem “Thanksgiving” by lost lady Lydia Maria Child. AND we remain ever thankful for you, our listeners! Discussed in this episode: Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life by Lydia Moland “The Thanksgiving Poem” The Paul Curtis House The Frugal Housewife by Lydia Maria Child Th…

Send us a Text Message. 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 wi…

Send us a Text Message. Last week, with guest Kathleen B. Jones, we discussed Christine de Pizan and her Book of the City of Ladies. Could a woman's hand have been behind any of the beautiful illustrations in this medieval work? Given what we know about women's involvement as artists in the medieval manuscript making process, it's certainly possibl…

Send us a Text Message. A widow who turned to her pen to support herself and her family, Christine de Pizan was described by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex as the first “woman to take up her pen in defense of her sex.” Published in 1405, The Book of the City of Ladies is Christine’s history of Western civilization from the point of view—and i…

Send us a Text Message. Learn more about the feminist open source publisher cita press and An Immortal Book: Selected Writings of Sui Sin Far, a curated collection of short fiction and nonfiction by the pioneering writer, Sui Sin Far (also known as Edith Maude Eaton), one of our past "lost ladies." A journalist and writer of Chinese and British des…

Send us a Text Message. Originally drafted in 1939, the Prohibition-era gangster novel The Girl by Meridel Le Sueur remained unpublished for nearly 40 years. Le Sueur used the intervening decades to transform her work into a beautifully-written, powerful narrative, focusing on the lives of marginalized women in Depression-era America. Joining us is…

Send us a Text Message. In this week’s mini, Amy shares some of the lesser-known spots she visited on her August trip to England (which included meetups with a few past guests from the show!). From Cotswolds beauty to bizarre curiosities—as well as a few lost ladies—you’ll be wishing she had packed you along in her suitcase! CORRECTION: Leonora Car…

Send us a Text Message. Joining us to discuss Mary Wollstonecraft's extraordinary life and her seminal work, A Vindication on the Rights of Woman, is Dr. Susan J. Wolfson, a professor of English from Princeton University whose scholarship focuses on British Writers of the Romantic period. Her latest book, On Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of t…

Send us a Text Message. In this week’s mini, we’re sharing some of our favorite verbal faux pas and mondegreens. The term mondegreen, which was coined by Sylvia Wright in a 1954 essay for Harper's Magazine, refers to instances where phrases are misheard or misinterpreted, giving them new and often humorous meanings. Amy challenges Kim to identify c…

Send us a Text Message. Sylvia Townsend Warner's "Lolly Willowes” (1926) holds a coveted spot on The Guardian's list of the top 100 English language novels and acclaimed director Greta Gerwig is also a fan. Author Sarah Watling joins us to discuss how the novel critiques societal constraints placed on single women and its connection to Townsend War…

Send us a Text Message. From Dark Academia trends inspired by Donna Tartt's “The Secret History” to other campus novels like Kingsley Amis' “Lucky Jim” and Philip Roth's “The Human Stain,” we delve into the quirks, challenges, and intrigues of university professor characters and campus settings for this week’s mini. We also touch on classics like D…

Send us a Text Message. When 'Divorcing' was first published in 1969, the critic Hugh Kenner penned a review for the New York Times that dismissed its author, Susan Taubes, as 'a quick-change artist donning the garments of other writers.' Tragically, merely days after the review's publication, Taubes took her own life. However, in recent years, the…

Send us a Text Message. In support of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, this week’s mini is focused on lost lady screenwriters. In the early days of Hollywood, more than half of all screenplays copyrighted were written by women, who were pioneers in this field. Discussed in this episode: Anita Loos Frances Marion June Mathis Go West, Young…

Send us a Text Message. Ismat Chughtai was one of the boldest and most outspoken writers of her day. Her cleverly-crafted short story “The Quilt” sparked a years-long obscenity trial, but it also helped establish her as a writer who wasn’t afraid to shine a light on taboo subjects and speak frankly about women’s experiences both in the traditional …

Send us a Text Message. In this week’s mini episode, we’re talking about Anne Askew, a Tudor writer, poet, and Protestant preacher who was condemned as a heretic during the reign of Henry VIII. We’ll also explore the possible connection to Kim’s own family history. Support the Show. For episodes and show notes, visit: LostLadiesofLit.com Discuss ep…

Send us a Text Message. Set in 16th-century France and published in 1941, Janet Lewis’s “The Wife of Martin Guerre” revolves around one woman's struggle to reconcile cold facts with the truth in her heart. Inspired by a real historical incident, the novella delves into the trial of a woman who faces a predicament when her long-lost husband unexpect…

Send us a Text Message. In this week’s mini we discuss Elspeth Barker, a Scottish writer raised in Drumtochty Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, where her parents ran a prep school for boys. Barker was a close friend of last week’s lost lady, Elizabeth Smart despite the fact that Barker was married to the poet George Barker, Smart’s former lover and …

Send us a Text Message. When Elizabeth Smart’s 1945 poetic prose novel “By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept” was reissued in 1966, Angela Carter called it "Madame Bovary blasted by lightning," and Morrissey has since credited Smart’s writing as having influenced his lyrics for The Smiths. This week’s guests are biographer Rosemary Sullivan…