Cool Dead Women

JK Rowling's forgotten idol, Edith Nesbit, wrote about loveable, bulgy-eyed monsters, threw wild parties, and was part of a legendary open marriage (in the 1800s!)   

Not one, not two, but three Cool Dead Women! We explore the stories of two revolutionary American poets and one South African exile musician. All fought hard for they believed in, and we hope they inspire you do the same. 

A writer! The first woman elected to a Caribbean parliament! A royal scandal! All of this (and a pet lion) await you in our newest episode...

Moonshine, orange groves, and catching flounders barehanded: the life of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling. 

Before Nancy Pelosi, before literally any woman was in federal office...there was Jeannette Rankin. 

Sophie Blanchard, the world's first female aeronaut and the inspiration behind the new Amazon movie, The Aeronauts. Sort of. 

Lucia Pamela: a child piano prodigy turned beauty queen turned astronaut who released her first album in her mid 60s. 

Hannah Szenes, Haviva Reik, and Sara Braverman were three Jewish Parachutists of Mandate Palestine. One of our heavier episodes...

Dr. Leila Denmark was a pediatrician in Atlanta who started treating children (or "little angels," as she called them) in 1928...and didn't stop for 73 years.   She also helped develop a vaccine for whooping cough, popularized "mush," wrote numerous books, and was the fourth-oldest person in the world when she died.  Thank you to our lovely listener, Carrie, for bringing Dr. Denmark to our attention! Do you have a Cool Dead Woman to share? 

Meet the world's most glamorous librarian.

Do we owe rock music to a queer black woman from Arkansas? Probably. 

Edna St. Vincent Millay was the highest paid poet-dramatist in American history, won the Pulitzer Prize, and was praised by the likes of Thomas Hardy and A.E. Houseman - yet most people hardly knew she existed. What happened?  

When a mother is internationally famous, it’s hard for a child, especially for a daughter, to step outside her mother’s shadow. And that’s why, really, it’s impossible to separate Ellen Terry, the most beloved actress of the late nineteenth century—the Meryl Streep of her day—from her daughter, Edith Craig. Edy (as she was always known) was an accomplished theatre producer, and activist for women’s suffrage—plus a member of the most famous lesbian threesomes of the early twentieth century.

Now you finally have something to talk about with your dentist! 

We're back for Season Two with Lillian Nordica! She was of the foremost dramatic sopranos of her day, a Coca-Cola model, an outspoken advocate for women, and now...a very friendly ghost. 

Arson, shootouts, and sugarcane: the story of the first woman mayor of the south.

This story is very personal to me, not because I ever knew Una Marson - she died in 1965 and our paths never crossed - but because I’ve been researching her for decades. I've taken dangerous taxi rides in Kingston, Jamaica; drunk straight rum for breakfast in London, and called everyone in the Washington, DC phone book with a particular last name - but you do that for old friends and Una's like an old friend to me. You'll soon see why.  

The story of Jean Rhys, a writer from Dominica who moved to London and Paris, who found success but never happiness. Featuring commentary from Elaine Savory (Jean Rhys, Cambridge University Press) and Christine Pountney (The Guardian). Archival interviews from Jean's legendary editor Diana Athill and much more!

Incest rumors, an overbearing mother, and golden years alone in an apartment, talking to photographs: an abandoned soap opera plot, or the story of Dare Wright, a photographer best known for The Lonely Doll series, dubbed by The New Yorker as the “Creepiest Children's Book.”

A spy who used "sexpionage" to help win WWII, flirtatious safe cracking, several unexplained deaths...

Hailed as the "first singer-songwriter" by the BBC , Connie disappeared forever in 1974, leaving behind a meticulously curated filing cabinet of cryptic diaries and letters.  Massive thanks to Andrea Kannes, without who this episode would not be possible. 

A cure for leprosy, a mysterious death: the story of Alice Augusta Ball.