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Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.
This week on Writer’s Voice, two authors explore fascinating episodes from women’s history—stories of bold individuals who challenged the boundaries of power, speech, and social convention.
Journalist Eden Collinsworth discusses The Improbable Mrs. Woodhull, her biography of Victoria Woodhull—an astonishing figure who rose from poverty to become a stockbroker, newspaper publisher, and the first woman to run for President of the United States in 1872.
“I, like you and most Americans, knew nothing of her.”
Then novelist Shelley Noble joins us to talk about The Sisters of Book Row, a historical novel set in 1915 New York during Anthony Comstock’s aggressive crusade against books and information he deemed “obscene.” Noble’s story centers on three sisters running a bookstore in Manhattan’s famous Book Row, where booksellers faced censorship, raids, and the threat of imprisonment.
“My thing as an author is to find those little niches of people who actually make history that we should know about, but we very often don’t know about.”
Together, these conversations illuminate forgotten histories about the power of books and the struggle for women’s rights.
Read or Listen to A Sample from The Improbable Victoria Woodhull
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Tags: Victoria Woodhull, Eden Collinsworth, Shelley Noble, The Improbable Mrs. Woodhull, The Sisters of Book Row, Writer’s Voice podcast, women’s history,
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