Land of Laura: the Podcast about Laura Ingalls Wilder

Dr. Kelly Ferguson has been entertaining Laura fans since 2011 with her hilarious book MY LIFE AS LAURA: HOW I SEARCHED FOR LAURA INGALLS WILDER AND FOUND MYSELF. But writing about Laura had a way of breaking her heart, and fifteen years later, she's embraced a new affinity for Rose Wilder Lane. Kelly's substack, Albaniac, details her own travels to Rose's onetime home and shares interviews with the top minds in Rose Wilder Lane scholarship. Today, Land of Laura talks to Kelly about the book, her heartbreak with Laura, and finding her way to Albania.

===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================

At its core, the Land of Laura podcast is about celebrating the people in world of Laura Ingalls Wilder: the researchers, the museum professionals, the historians, the academics, the fans ... all of us. But what exactly is it about Laura Ingalls Wilder that brings us all together when we're all so different? New York City–based filmmaker Amy Elliott asked herself that questions, and decided she wanted to answer it in film. She's just finishing up filming for Girls Gone Wilder, a documentary that explores the culture of Laura Ingalls Wilder fandom. We're so excited to have her as this week's guest in the Land of Laura studio.

===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================

In 1937, when she was 70 years old, Laura Ingalls Wilder traveled to Detroit to deliver a speech that would forever after be known as her "Detroit Book Fair Speech." What was the Detroit Book Fair? What was in her speech? Why is this speech considered so integral to her career? Eddie Higgins returns to the podcast with answers to all of this and more. Then, eavesdrop on our field trip to the Detroit Public Library, home of one of the most robust collections of Laura Ingalls Wilder artifacts.

===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================

Chris Czajka's day job is with WNET in New York City, and in 2020 he developed and produced Laura Ingalls Wilder: Prairie to Page as part of PBS's American Masters series. But that's only a smidge of his Little House involvement. Tune in to find out all of the ways Little House — both the book series and the TV show — has found its way into his life.

===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================

It's a special Thanksgiving episode with the origin story of Pamela Smith Hill, a longtime literary fixture in the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Hill's biography Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life was published in 2007 by the South Dakota Historical Society Press. She went on to act as editor and annotator of Pioneer Girl, Wilder's previously unpublished memoir that became an unexpected national bestseller in 2014, also with SDHS Press. Her latest book is Too Good to Be Altogether Lost: Rediscovering Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Books, published in July 2025 by University of Nebraska Press.

===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================

Cindy Wilson couldn’t get the question out of her head: Was the Long Winter really as bad as Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote in her book? Answering that question—from trains to food to fuel—resulted in a book, The Beautiful Snow. Cindy visits the podcast to tell us all about it.

===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================

Our conversation with author and children's book editor Wendy McClure includes her book The Wilder Life, the hilarity of 1970s Weight Watchers recipes, and encounters with Melissa Gilbert.

===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================

Historic interpreter Laura Keyes joins the podcast to talk about Little House fashion — dresses in particular — with a special emphasis on those in Little Town on the Prairie and These Happy Golden Years. Laura Keyes won the Mary Todd Lincoln Oratory Award at Kentucky's Lincoln Days in 2025.

===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================

Though they both live in the United States now, Brits Katy Bowman and Eddie Higgins grew up reading the Little House® books in England, where the meaning of Laura Ingalls Wilder's words wasn't always straightforward. Join us as the two Brits trade stories about what might have gotten lost in translation. Voracious, indeed!

===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================

Blizzards and tornadoes and grasshopper weather ... the Little House® books are full of weather events. They're also based on real life, so did this weather really happen? Meteorologist and climatologist Barb Boustead talks about her just-published book, Wilder Weather, which connects the weather mentioned in the Little House® series with actual, historical weather events.

===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================