Lost Ladies of Lit

Apr 08 2025 241 ep. 29 mins 42
Lost Ladies of Lit Podcast artwork

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.

  Arts  History  Society & Culture
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🔒 Castaway Follow-up — He Said/She Said

Apr 08 2025 12 mins  
Subscriber-only episode Send us a text There are always two sides to every story. In last week’s episode we discussed Lucy Irvine’s 1983 memoir Castaway, about her year-long experience on a deserted island. This week, Amy turns her attention to the memoir written by Irvine’s “other half” on that adventure, Gerald Kingsland. Do the two authors’ respective accounts of the

Lucy Irvine — Castaway with Francesca Segal

Apr 01 2025 36 mins  
Send us a text When Lucy Irvine answered a classified ad to play Girl Friday to a real-life Robinson Crusoe on a remote tropical island, she embarked on an enthralling—and at times harrowing—year-long adventure. The result was her bestselling 1983 memoir, Castaway, a beautifully-written tale of survival. We’re diving into Irvine’s unforgettable story with special guest Fran

🔒 Penning Patriotism — Katharine Lee Bates and "America the Beautiful"

Mar 25 2025 15 mins  
Subscriber-only episode Send us a text The recent hatching of baby eaglets in Big Bear, CA has Amy thinking a lot about patriotism and what it actually means in turbulent times for our country. Lost lady of lit Katharine Lee Bates — a staunch activist for social justice who decried America’s isolationist policies — must have considered the same when, during a trip across the

Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich — Religious Mystics with Victoria MacKenzie

Mar 18 2025 47 mins  
Send us a text Religious mystics Margery of Kempe and Julian of Norwich lived in close proximity to one another in time and place, yet the lives of these two medieval women couldn’t have been more different. One traveled the world in relentless pursuit of spiritual validation, while the other withdrew into a walled cell. One boldly proclaimed her visions of Christ while the other

🔒 Luck Be A Lady: Amy Gets an "Honorific"

Mar 11 2025 13 mins  
Subscriber-only episode Send us a text Having been gifted a parcel of land on a Scottish estate, Amy was recently granted the title of “Lady Amy of Blairadam.” Kim joins her in this week’s bonus episode to “bend the knee” and to discuss the fine-print details of this development courtesy of a company called Scotland Titles. Together, they ponder her future as a member of

Frances Wright — A Few Days in Athens with Tristra Yeager and Eleanor Rust

Mar 04 2025 41 mins  
Send us a text How do you engage with others in a polarized society? Early 19-century writer and freethinker Frances “Fanny” Wright offers an ostensible how-to manual in the witty didactic novel she penned at age 19, A Few Days in Athens. Wright’s radical ideas garnered her the praise of Thomas Jefferson, the Marquis de Lafayette and Walt Whitman, to name a few, but detractor

🔒 Marianne Faithfull’s “Lady of Shalott” and Other Doomed Noblewomen

Feb 25 2025 13 mins  
Subscriber-only episode Send us a text One of the last projects recorded by singer/actress Marianne Faithfull (who passed away in January) was a 2021 spoken word album of English Romantic poetry, including a hauntingly beautiful 12-minute recitation of Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott.” After exploring Faithfull’s passion for (and family connections to) classic literature, Amy f

Katharine S. White — Shaping The New Yorker, with Amy Reading

Feb 18 2025 47 mins  
Send us a text One hundred years ago this week, The New Yorker published its first issue. A few months later, the magazine’s first (and for decades, only) female editor joined the staff. Katharine S. White spent the better part of the next 50 years wielding her pen and her editorial influence there, carefully tending to an ever-growing stable of talented (sometimes high-maintenan

🔒 Dorothy Parker's Last Wish: The NAACP and a Lost Urn

Feb 11 2025 12 mins  
Subscriber-only episode Send us a text How did Martin Luther King Jr. (and eventually, the NAACP) end up the stewards of Dorothy Parker’s literary estate? A life of bold activism prompted the witty writer to quietly bequeath her body of work to advocates for racial justice. But what happened to her actual body (or rather, her ashes) is another story entirely—one that involves m

Literary Jewelry with Leigh Batnick Plessner

Feb 04 2025 38 mins  
Send us a text January was dismal, but we’re distracting ourselves with something shiny in this first new full-length episode of the year. Catbird Chief Creative Officer Leigh Batnick Plessner joins us to explore three works by women writers, each of whom used jewelry as a powerful storytelling device. Louise de Vilmorin, Maria Edgeworth and Dorothy Parker feature diamond earring