Lost Ladies of Lit

Send us Fan Mail In this week's episode, we are joined by critic and author Maud Newton as we delve into Theodora Keogh's enigmatic and haunting 1952 novel, "Street Music," which takes place in post-War Paris. As the granddaughter of an American icon, Keogh's writing possessed a subversive quality that defied easy classification, challenging readers and earning admiration...

Send us Fan Mail The gorgeous book Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life mines the life and musings of famous women authors on subjects such as finding your literary voice, conquering inner demons, dealing with rejection and how to deal with writer’s block. Joining us for this week’s mini is the book’s author,  Nava Atlas.  Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit:  LostLadiesofLit....

Send us Fan Mail With her witty and self-deprecating takes on dating and the single life, the narrator of Miriam Karpilove’s Diary of a Lonely Girl: Or the Battle Against Free Love is the 1918 Yiddish precursor to Girls ’ Hannah Horvath, Sex and the City ’s Carrie Bradshaw, and Bridget Jones. Guest Jessica Kirzane’s English translation of the novel was published by Syracuse University Press in 202...

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes the most fraught journey is simply making it to adulthood. In this week’s mini, we talk about authors who survived unusual and/or traumatic childhoods and used their experiences to write engrossing, and often healing, works of art.  Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit:  LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lost...

Send us Fan Mail 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 not...

Send us Fan Mail In this week’s mini, we discuss Nora Ephron’s 1983 autobiographical novel Heartburn , inspired by the breakdown of her marriage with journalist Carl Bernstein. Plus Amy tries out some of the book’s recipes on her unsuspecting family . Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit:  LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our substack newsletter. Follow us on instagram @lostladiesof...

Send us Fan Mail This is the Jazz Age novel we should have read in high school! Ursula Parrott’s Ex-Wife was an instant bestseller when it was published anonymously in 1929, and it’s inspired by her own experience as a young divorcée and flapper in New York. Guest Marsha Gordon’s new biography of Parrott, Becoming the Ex-Wife, arrives in bookstores at the same time as a reissue of the dazzling nov...

Send us Fan Mail In this week’s mini, we take a look at British writer Jenny Diski and her relationship with famed novelist Doris Lessing, who took a teenaged Jenny into her home. Though Lessing never adopted Diski, they had a long and at times awkward pseudo-familial relationship that Diski explored in her writing.  Links:  Why Didn’t You Just Do What You Were Told?  by Jenny Diski Lost Ladies of...

Send us Fan Mail With its speculative plot including an expedition through the desert, a cryptic treasure map, secret chambers, and a run-in with an ancient sacred crocodile, Pauline E. Hopkins’ thrilling afrofuturist 1902 novel Of One Blood; or The Hidden Self calls to mind Black Panther ’s Wakanda and Raiders of the Lost Ark . Hopkins brings up a lot of questions about race and power in the mids...

Send us Fan Mail Did you know that novelist and iconic flapper Zelda Fitgerald was also an accomplished artist? In 1926, she began creating a series of paper dolls for her daughter, Scottie, and continued working on them for much of the rest of her life. Her granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan, saved and collected these paper dolls which were recently compiled into a beautiful, 128-page book, The Paper...

Send us Fan Mail 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 Prof...

Send us Fan Mail No, we’re not talking about that kind of “dirty,” we’re talking about the germy kind as it relates to stuff that’s been found in the pages of library books over the years. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s poignant, and other times, it’s just plain toxic! Join us as we digress in this week’s mini episode.  Discussed in this episode:  “ Why Joey Keeps Books in the Freezer ” (Fro...

Send us Fan Mail 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.  Discus...

Send us Fan Mail Guest Dr. Leah Broad joins us from Oxford University’s Christ Church to discuss Quartet , her acclaimed new biography of four British composers: Ethel Smyth, Rebecca Clarke, Dorothy Howell, and Doreen Carwithen. Three of the four women were celebrities in their own day and all were incredibly talented, yet their captivating life stories and their once acclaimed compositions have b...

Send us Fan Mail Born to a Chinese father and a Belgian mother, Han Suyin qualified as a doctor in London before moving to Hong Kong to practice medicine. After her novel A Many-Splendored Thing was adapted into a film in 1955, she became a full-time writer. Join us to learn more about Suyin’s remarkable life and her jewel of a novella, Winter Love , first published in 1962. In it, she tells the s...

Send us Fan Mail In this week’s mini, we’re talking about twins in fiction, from Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet and Stephen King’s The Shining to some lesser-known gems. Plus, we have a letter from a new listener who wrote to us after hearing our episode about her late mother, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.   Discussed in this episode:  Lost Ladies of Lit on Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s  Heat and Dust  with Brigitte...

Send us Fan Mail 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 Tim...

Send us Fan Mail In this week’s mini we discuss the renowned Yaddo Artists’ Colony and the bittersweet story of the woman who envisioned this sylvan retreat on 400 acres in Saratoga Springs, New York. Since its inception in 1926 huge names in American literature have spent time as artists in residence at Yaddo, including important writers like Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, Patricia Highsmith, K...

Send us Fan Mail Like the sexually-liberated Tiger Queen from her scandalous bestselling 1907 novel Three Weeks , Elinor Glyn was bold, provocative and glamourous, with a magnetism that endeared her to international readers and Hollywood celebrities alike. (She counted Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, and Charlie Chaplin among her personal friends.) After introducing the concept o...

Send us Fan Mail New episodes beginning Feb 7. This episode originally aired in June 2021. Like her contemporary Herman Melville, New England writer Elizabeth Stoddard was a critical success—Nathaniel Hawthorne himself was a fan, and she was compared to Tolstoy, George Eliot, Balzac, and the Bronte sisters—but her books failed to find an audience when they were published. Join us as we discuss Sto...

Send us Fan Mail We're back with a full episode on Feb. 7. Irish novelist Margaret Wolfe Hungerford’s light Victorian-era romances were known throughout the English-speaking world, and her novel Molly Bawn was even name dropped in James Joyce’s Ulysses . Join us to find out why in a discussion with guest Jessica Callahan, Hallmark Channel exec and former editor of romance and mystery novels a...

Send us Fan Mail We're back with new episodes on February 7! The New York Times called The Green Parrot “A strange and beautiful story, with the faintly arid charm of a miniature painted on the cover of a seventeenth-century snuff box.” That’s just one of the many reasons Amy and Kim couldn’t wait to discuss the provocative and brilliant author Princess Marthe Bibesco and her 1924 gem of a no...

Send us Fan Mail WE'RE BACK WITH A NEW EPISODE ON FEBRUARY 7, 2023. In this week’s episode, Amy and Kim have a conversation about Sui Sin Far and her wonderful short story collection, Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912), with journalist and author Victoria Namkung , who has her Master’s Degree in Asian American Studies from UCLA. Sui Sin Far, the pen name of Edith Maude Eaton, was a journalist and w...

Send us Fan Mail WE'RE BACK WITH A NEW EPISODE ON FEBRUARY 7, 2023. In this episode, Kim and Amy have a conversation about Constance Fenimore Woolson’s novel Anne (1880) with professor and author Anne Boyd Rioux , whose biography of Woolson was named one of 2016’s ten best books of the year by The Chicago Tribune . Woolson, a close friend of Henry James, is remembered as a salacious footnote...

Send us Fan Mail The Victorian era has been called the golden age of parlour games, and we share some interesting ones in this week’s mini episode. Let us know if you try any of them out by emailing info@lostladiesoflit.com or sharing on social @lostladiesoflit . We wish you the happiest of New Years!  Support the show For episodes and show notes, visit:  LostLadiesofLit.com Subscribe to our subst...