Lost Ladies of Lit Amy Helmes & Kim Askew

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 by silent disco and Shakespeare, and we invite listeners to text feedback using a new ‘text us’ feature. Plus, we tease upcoming episodes, including one on screenwriter Elaine May, and announce exclusive bonus content for Patreon members. Tune in fo...

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 Innocence," who offers insight into Comyns' unique blend of dark humor and her empathetic portrayals of vulnerable protagonists. Graham Greene was a fan and wrote of her, “The strange offbeat talent of Miss Comyns and that innocent eye which observes...

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 the novel in a Cairo market some 30 years later launched acclaimed Egyptian writer Iman Mersal on a decades-long, life-altering quest to solve the many mysteries about al-Zayyat’s life, death and legacy. Mersal joins us in this episode to dis...

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 her Haight-Ashbury activism in the late 1960s. An intrepid modernist committed to a “Revolution of the Word,” this two-time O. Henry award-winner penned 14 novels, eight volumes of poetry and 11 collections of short fiction, yet too few readers today have read her wo...

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 the Young Ireland movement while writing for Dublin’s radical newspaper “The Nation” in the 1840s. Oscar may have inherited his mother’s wit, intellect and larger-than-life personality, but his later legal troubles were also preceded by her own very publ...

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 and join in the fun! For the full forty-minute episode in which we discuss the author Taylor's writing and also confab on Roger Lewis's Erotic Vagrancy, the dishy 2023 biography of film stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, visit our Pa...