Lost Ladies of Lit

By Amy Helmes & Kim Askew

What's Lost Ladies of Lit about?

A book podcast hosted by writing partners Amy Helmes and Kim Askew. Guests include biographers, journalists, authors, and cultural historians discussing lost classics by women writers.

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Lost Ladies of Lit episodes:

06.25.2024
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...
06.18.2024
Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter, Lost Lady of Translation — with Jo Salas
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...
06.11.2024
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,...
06.04.2024
Elaine May — Miss May Does Not Exist with Carrie Courogen
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...
06.02.2024
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...
05.21.2024
Kim and Amy Catch Their Book Breath
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...
05.14.2024
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...
05.07.2024
Barbara Comyns — Our Spoons Came From Woolworths and The Vet’s Daughter with Avril Horner
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...
04.30.2024
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...
04.23.2024
Enayat al-Zayyat — Love and Silence with Iman Mersal
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...
04.16.2024
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...
04.09.2024
Kay Boyle — Fifty Stories with Anne Boyd Rioux
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...
04.02.2024
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...
03.26.2024
Speranza, a.k.a Oscar Wilde’s Mom
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...
03.25.2024
Whose Line is it Anyway? Elizabeth Taylor vs. Elizabeth Taylor
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...
03.19.2024
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...
03.12.2024
Emilie Loring —Uncharted Seas with Patti Bender
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...
03.05.2024
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...
02.27.2024
Angela Milne — One Year’s Time with Simon David Thomas
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...
02.20.2024
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...
02.13.2024
Carolyn Wells — Murder in the Bookshop with Rebecca Rego Barry
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...
02.06.2024
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...
01.30.2024
Zelda Fitzgerald — Save Me the Waltz with Stephanie Peebles Tavera
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...
01.23.2024
HiATUS ENCORE: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala — Heat and Dust with Brigitte Hales
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...
01.16.2024
HIATUS ENCORE: Edna Ferber — So Big with Dr. Caroline Frick
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...
01.09.2024
HIATUS ENCORE: The Woman of Colour: A Tale with Leigh-Michil George
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...
01.02.2024
Hiatus Replay: Maud Hart Lovelace — The Betsy-Tacy High School Books with Sadie Stein
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...
12.26.2023
Hiatus Replay: Lucia Berlin — A Manual for Cleaning Women with Mimi Pond
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...
12.19.2023
Hiatus Replay: Amy Levy — Reuben Sachs with Dr. Ann Kennedy Smith
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...
12.12.2023
Hiatus Replay: Jane and Mary Findlater — Crossriggs with Julie and Shawna Benson
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....
12.05.2023
Hiatus Replay: Hilma Wolitzer — Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket
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...
11.28.2023
Mary McCarthy’s The Group Turns 60
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...
11.21.2023
Lydia Maria Child and the “Thanksgiving” Poem
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...
11.14.2023
Alba de Céspedes — Forbidden Notebook with Joy Castro
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...
11.07.2023
The Women Who Illuminated Manuscripts
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...
10.31.2023
Christine de Pizan — The Book of the City of Ladies with Kathleen B. Jones
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...
10.24.2023
Cita Press & Sui Sin Far with Juliana Castro Varón and Victoria Namkung
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...
10.17.2023
Meridel Le Sueur — The Girl with Rosemary Hennessy
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,...
10.10.2023
An England Travelogue
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...
10.03.2023
Mary Wollstonecraft — A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Susan J. Wolfson
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...
09.26.2023
Verbal Faux Pas and Mondegreens
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...
09.19.2023
Sylvia Townsend Warner — Lolly Willowes with Sarah Watling
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...
09.12.2023
Back to School Prof Edition
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...
09.05.2023
Susan Taubes — Divorcing with Rosemary Kelty
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.'...
08.29.2023
Hollywood’s Golden Age (for Women)
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...
08.22.2023
Ismat Chughtai - The Quilt and Other Stories with Tania Malik
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...
08.15.2023
Anne Askew’s Unyielding Spirit
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...
08.08.2023
Janet Lewis — The Wife of Martin Guerre with Iris Jamahl Dunkle
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...
08.01.2023
Episode 151: Elspeth Barker — O Caledonia
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...
07.25.2023
Elizabeth Smart — By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept with Rosemary Sullivan and Maya Gallus
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...

What's Lost Ladies of Lit about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Lost Ladies of Lit episodes:

Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter, Lost Lady of Translation — with Jo Salas

Elaine May — Miss May Does Not Exist with Carrie Courogen

Kim and Amy Catch Their Book Breath

Barbara Comyns — Our Spoons Came From Woolworths and The Vet’s Daughter with Avril Horner

Enayat al-Zayyat — Love and Silence with Iman Mersal

Kay Boyle — Fifty Stories with Anne Boyd Rioux

Speranza, a.k.a Oscar Wilde’s Mom

Whose Line is it Anyway? Elizabeth Taylor vs. Elizabeth Taylor

Emilie Loring —Uncharted Seas with Patti Bender

Angela Milne — One Year’s Time with Simon David Thomas

Carolyn Wells — Murder in the Bookshop with Rebecca Rego Barry

Zelda Fitzgerald — Save Me the Waltz with Stephanie Peebles Tavera

HiATUS ENCORE: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala — Heat and Dust with Brigitte Hales

HIATUS ENCORE: Edna Ferber — So Big with Dr. Caroline Frick

HIATUS ENCORE: The Woman of Colour: A Tale with Leigh-Michil George

Hiatus Replay: Maud Hart Lovelace — The Betsy-Tacy High School Books with Sadie Stein

Hiatus Replay: Lucia Berlin — A Manual for Cleaning Women with Mimi Pond

Hiatus Replay: Amy Levy — Reuben Sachs with Dr. Ann Kennedy Smith

Hiatus Replay: Jane and Mary Findlater — Crossriggs with Julie and Shawna Benson

Hiatus Replay: Hilma Wolitzer — Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket

Mary McCarthy’s The Group Turns 60

Lydia Maria Child and the “Thanksgiving” Poem

Alba de Céspedes — Forbidden Notebook with Joy Castro

The Women Who Illuminated Manuscripts

Christine de Pizan — The Book of the City of Ladies with Kathleen B. Jones

Cita Press & Sui Sin Far with Juliana Castro Varón and Victoria Namkung

Meridel Le Sueur — The Girl with Rosemary Hennessy

An England Travelogue

Mary Wollstonecraft — A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Susan J. Wolfson

Verbal Faux Pas and Mondegreens

Sylvia Townsend Warner — Lolly Willowes with Sarah Watling

Back to School Prof Edition

Susan Taubes — Divorcing with Rosemary Kelty

Hollywood’s Golden Age (for Women)

Ismat Chughtai - The Quilt and Other Stories with Tania Malik

Anne Askew’s Unyielding Spirit

Janet Lewis — The Wife of Martin Guerre with Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Episode 151: Elspeth Barker — O Caledonia

Elizabeth Smart — By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept with Rosemary Sullivan and Maya Gallus

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