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 on a decades-long, life-altering quest to solve the many mysteries about al-Zayyat’s life, death and legacy. Mersal joins us in this episode to discuss the recent English...

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-time O. Henry award-winner penned 14 novels, eight volumes of poetry and 11 collections of short fiction, yet too few readers today have read her work or even know her...

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 may have inherited his mother’s wit, intellect and larger-than-life personality, but his later legal troubles were also preceded by her own very public and scandalous libel...

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's writing and also confab on Roger Lewis's Erotic Vagrancy, the dishy 2023 biography of film stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, visit our Patreon:  Support the...

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 after her death in 1950, prompting publishers to sell ghost-written “Emilie Loring” novels that continued to sell by the tens of millions. Having read each of Loring’s...

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 contributor to Punch magazine, and her snappy wit shines bright in this charming and surprisingly modern novel. Fans of the Netflix series One Day will be particularly...

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 The Vanishing of Carolyn Wells: Investigations Into a Forgotten Mystery Author, joins us to discuss Wells and her 1936 detective novel, Murder in the Bookshop.  Discussed...

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 narrative, including her childhood in Alabama, her marriage to F. Scott Fitzgerald, and her attempt to become a professional ballerina in Paris at the age of 25. Joining us...

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, Heat and Dust.  Discussed in this episode:  Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Brigitte Hales  Disenchanted (2022 film) Merchant Ivory Productions A Room with a...

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 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,...

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 Geffen Academy at UCLA, joins us to discuss the novel and its historical importance as well as its influence on Regency-era television adaptations of Sanditon and...

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 (1906-1910): Heaven To Betsy, Betsy in Spite of Herself, Betsy Was a Junior, and Betsy and Joe with our guest, culture writer and editor Sadie Stein.  Discussed in this...

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 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. Discussed...

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 Amy Levy and her stunning, sardonic novel Reuben Sachs, which fan and friend Oscar Wilde deemed a classic.  Discussed in this episode:  Daniel Deronda by George...

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 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. Discussed in this...

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 author Meg Wolitzer, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and published last summer in a new collection earning great critical acclaim. Today A Woman Went Mad in the...

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 for its frank discussion of topics ranging from sex and contraception to lesbianism and mental illness.  Discussed in this episode: Lost Ladies of Lit Patreon Wait...

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 The Mother’s Book by Lydia Maria Child An Appeal in Favor of the Class of Americans Called Africans by Lydia Maria Child Flowers for Children: Part 2  “1900 House”...

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...

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 possible. Kathleen, the author of the new novel Cities of Women, is back with us for this week’s bonus episode to talk about it.  Support the showFor episodes and show notes,...

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 in praise of—women, showcasing them as the intellectual and moral equals of men. Joining us is San Diego State University women’s study professor emeritus Kathleen B....

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 descent who moved to the U.S, Sui Sin Far wrote about what it was like to live as a Chinese woman in a white America. We welcome back our previous guest Victoria Namkung as...

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 Dr. Rosemary Hennessy, a Professor of English at Rice University, whose most recent book, In the Company of Radical Women Writers, rediscovers the political commitments...

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 Carrington originally met Max Ernst at Erno and Ursula Goldfinger’s previous address at the Highpoint apartments in North London. They were never married. Discussed:  2...