Menstruation is a strangely taboo topic in our culture. Back in the 1970s and 80s, teenagers read Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Our Bodies, Ourselves under their covers with a flashlight. Girls were largely left to figure things out for themselves or confide in each other to discover what was normal.

After hearing a harrowing coming-of-age story from her great aunt, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff started gathering stories about menstruation in her family that had never been told. What began as an oral history project quickly snowballed. Our Red Book (Simon & Schuster, 2022) takes us through stories of first periods, last periods, missing periods, and everything about bleeding that people wish they had been told.

Rachel joins Marrie Stone to talk about publishing her first anthology (My Little Red Book, 2009) when she was a college freshman and how a high school English teacher gave her the confidence of her convictions. Much has changed in our society in those intervening years and Rachel talks about how Our Red Book expanded the conversation to be more gender inclusive, as well as inviting voices from different generations and cultures.

Their conversation also covers several writing-related topics, including advice about assembling and structuring an anthology, finding contributors, the delicate process of editing, book proposals, Rachel’s work at 3 Hole Press, and more.

For more information on Writers on Writing and additional writing tips, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website.

(Recorded in December 2022) 

Host: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
Co-Host: Marrie Stone
Music and sound design: Travis Barrett