Lost Ladies of Lit
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. You can support Lost Ladies of Lit by visiting https://www.patreon.com/c/LostLadiesofLit339.
Episodes
305 episodes
Eibhlín Dubh’s “The Lament for Art O’Leary”
“The Lament for Art O’Leary” (“Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire”) was composed by Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill upon the 1773 murder of her husband in County Cork. The anguishing funeral lament remains one of the most iconic literary works in...
ENCORE: Jane White —Quarry with Helen Hughes
We're celebrating summer with another sultry, almost-suffocating novel from our podcast vaults, one clearly written with William Golding's Lord of the Flies in mind. When Jane White’s gripping and unsettling debut novel Quarry...
Kim and Amy Take a Field Trip!
In this bonus episode, Amy catalogues all the incredible finds she and Kim discovered during their recent field trip to the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA. This world-class institution (which houses 12 million items, from books, to docume...
ENCORE WITH UPDATE! Ruth Prawer Jhabvala — Heat and Dust with Brigitte Hales
With Counterpoint Press's new editions of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's work (including her Booker-Prize winning novel Heat and Dust and a new short story collection Disinheritance: The Rediscovered Stories) we're inspired to revisit...
Three Novels on Generational Trauma
In this follow up to last week’s episode on Nettie Jones’s Fish Tales, Amy discusses three more Black women authors who tackle generational trauma in their work. The Blues-infused Corregidora, published in 1975, was ...
Nettie Jones — Fish Tales with Hannah Eko
First published in 1983 after being championed by Toni Morrison, Nettie Jones’s Fish Tales recounts one woman’s trauma-filled, hedonistic quest for personal freedom amidst a “Disco-Era,” drug-fuelled backdrop — one inspired by Jones’s ...
Josephine Tey Extras and a Summer Reading Recommendation
In this follow-up to last week’s episode on crime novelist Josephine Tey, we’re sharing some extra moments with Tey’s biographer, Jennifer Morag Henderson, that didn’t make it into last week’s show. Find out more about the Tey’s connections to ...
Josephine Tey — The Daughter of Time with Jennifer Morag Henderson
Considered one of the greatest crime novels of all time, Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time flipped 450 years of British history on its head by re-examining Richard III’s purported involvement in the murder of his two young nephews, ...
Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira — A Prodigy’s Meteoric Rise… and Murder
“Mommy Dearest” meets 1930s Spain in this episode’s exploration of a young woman conceived and raised by her single mother to be a prodigy and prototype of the “perfect woman.” Hildegart Rodríguez Carballeira more than lived up to her mother’s ...
Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry—The Tale of the Rose with Sara Kippur
Though her high-flying literary husband took center-stage, Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry was more than just the metaphorical “rose” in his novella The Little Prince. She was a writer and artist in her own right, with a gift for storytellin...
Clara S. Foltz, María Ruiz de Burton and the Land Wars That Stymied Them Both
In this follow-up to last week’s episode, Amy explores the connection between legal pioneer Clara Foltz, California’s first female attorney, and our previous “lost lady,” María Amparo Ruiz de Burton. After fighting to change state laws so that ...
María Amparo Ruiz de Burton — Who Would Have Thought It? with Quite Literally Books
The first Mexican-American woman novelist to be published in English, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton chose a surprising subject matter—East Coast high society—for her first novel, Who Would Have Thought It? She was uniquely qualified to s...
Recent "Firsts" for Women in the Workforce
From NASA to the Church of England to the WNBA, women have celebrated some significant professional milestones in recent weeks. In this bonus episode, Amy breaks down all the bright spots while also diving into some disappointing news: the gend...
Juanita Harrison—My Great, Wide, Beautiful World with Cathryn Halverson
Determined from a young age to escape the Jim-Crow South and see new places, Mississippi native Juanita Harrison managed, as a working-class Black woman, to cultivate her own version of a grand world tour, paying for her globe-trotting by picki...
Tragic Mansions by Mrs. Philip Lydig
Gilded-Age gossip meets Edith-Wharton-style scandal in the 1927 Fifth-Avenue tell-all Tragic Mansions by Mrs. Philip Lydig (a.k.a. the fashionable socialite Rita de Acosta Lydig). Find out what prompted this glamorous doyenne to dish t...
Magda Szabó — Abigail with Deborah H. Sussman
A literary icon in her native Hungary, Magda Szabó was relatively unknown to English-speaking readers until recent translations of her work opened the door to her powerful storytelling. In today’s episode we focus on her 1970 novel Abigail<...
The Heroine's Journey ... Do We Need It?
Amy shares updates on previous book recommendations and contemplates how the ups and downs women encounter in life might differ from the archetypal “hero’s journey” described by Joseph Campbell. Jungian-oriented psychotherapist Maureen Murdock ...
Mary Elizabeth Braddon — Lady Audley's Secret with Kristine Huntley
Pass the smelling salts! Readers of the Victorian Era eagerly (or furtively) set scruples aside to read Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s 1862 sensation novel Lady Audley’s Secret — the title of which was enough to tempt even the most puritanic...
"Wuthering Heights" — The Reviews Are in!
Amy and Kim hightailed it to the theater to catch an opening-night screening of the new Emerald Fennell-directed "Wuthering Heights" starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. (We procured front-row seats and alcoholic drinks to prepare ...
ENCORE and updates! Elizabeth Garver Jordan — The Case of Lizzie Borden and Other Stories with Jane Carr and Lori Harrison-Kahan
Her Life in Ink, a brand new biography by Sharon Harris about Elizabeth Garver Jordan, provides a good reason to plunder our podcast vault this week to revisit an episode about this star journalist, editor and mystery author. Jordan’s ...
Olive Higgins Prouty — Sylvia Plath's Patroness
American novelist Olive Higgins Prouty served as both benefactress and mentor to a young Sylvia Plath — she’s depicted in The Bell Jar as the elderly patroness Philomena Guinea. Knowing that Prouty helped procure and pay for Plat...
Hazel Hawthorne — Salt House with Allison Bass-Riccio and Livia Tenzer
“Queen of the Dunes” Hazel Hawthorne was a Cape Cod legend who wrote about The Road nearly two decades before her one-time tenant, Jack Kerouac. A uniquely feminine precursor to Beat literature, her novel Salt House captures Bohemian l...
Disregard First Book — Trad Wives Pen a New Perspective
She wrote a book in defense of traditional homemaking — only to pen an about-face reckoning decades later when her 40-year-marriage went belly-up. In this episode, Amy discusses Disregard First Book author Terry Martin Hekker, who pass...
From Jane Austen to Zadie Smith — Advice from Women Writers for a More Productive 2026 (Encore Presentation)
In this encore presentation, Kim and Amy take stock by dusting off a "New Year’s" episode from 1921, sharing secrets of what makes their writing partnership work and turning to famous women writers — including Nancy Mitford, Isabelle Allende, A...
Daily Reading Goals and Thoughts on Shelly’s Sex Appeal
Amy elaborates on the reading goals she’s set for herself in 2026 to help center her distracted mind, including her mission to read at least one poem a day. The compelling joint biography of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley, Romantic Ou...