The Feminist Present

Greeetings! It's been a while! But we're back and one of us (Laura!) has A BOOK! It's called Pitchcraft: The Writer's Guide to Getting Agented, Published, and Paid, and it's out next week. So this is a short introduction to that book, to the writing life and to how Laura came to write it. We also have important announcements about the future of the podcast -- no worries, we're not going anywhere! But we're making some changes! Tune in and find out more!

When Chloé Caldwell began writing Trying, she imagined it being about her fertility journey. That was, until a betraying truth was revealed about her marriage. This week, Chloe joins the podcast to talk about the freedom she found in writing about her life right as it fell apart. Chloé Caldwell is a national bestselling author and writing teacher. She has authored five books including a 2024 national bestseller, Women. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Bon Appétit, The Cut, Vice, The Rumpus, and half a dozen anthologies. Her new memoir, Trying, is available today.

In this episode, Caro De Robertis joins Laura to discuss their new book, So Many Stars: an Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color. Caro and Laura take a deep look into the queer medicine found within the stories of Queer and Trans elders who fought to create space for their full selves in the world. Caro De Robertis is an Uruguayan–American author and professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University. They are the author of six novels and a nonfiction book, and the editor of an award-winning anthology. De Robertis' work has won the Stonewall Book Award, a New York Times Editors' Choice, and the Golden Poppy Octavia E. Butler Award. Their books have been translated into seventeen languages and have received numerous other honors, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, which they were the first openly nonbinary person to receive.

Melissa Febos joins Laura and Adrian to discuss her new book, The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex. Together, the trio dives deep into histories of horny nuns and Melissa’s experience of self discovery and feminist transformation during her period of abstinence. Melissa Febos is the critically acclaimed author of 5 books including Whip Smart and GIRLHOOD, books that weave personal narrative with feminist thought and sharp lyricism. She is a recipient of a 2022 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism for her book GIRLHOOD. Among many other recognitions, her book, BODY WORK, has been acclaimed as a national bestseller and an LA Times Bestseller. Her newest book, The Dry Season, is available now.

In this episode, Cat Bohannon joins Laura and Adrian to discuss her most recent book, Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, where she reframes the stories we tell about human evolution with women at the center. Cat Bohannon’s is a poet, academic, and scientist. She completed her PhD in 2022 at Columbia University, where she studied the evolution of narrative and cognition. Her work has appeared in Science, The Atlantic, Scientific American, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Georgia Review, and Poets Against the War.

This week, we have the incredible Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs on the show. Her newest work Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde is a biography that offers a new understanding of the life and work of Audre Lorde. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the first researcher to explore the full depths of Lorde’s manuscript archives and this work illuminates a new perspective on the enduring impact of Lorde and her work. Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist. She is a poet, writer, scholar and activist based in Durham, North Carolina. Her writings have appeared in key movement periodicals like Make/Shift, Left Turn, The Abolitionist, Ms. Magazine, and the collections Pleasure Activism, Abolition Now, The Revolution Starts at Home, Dear Sister and the Transformative Justice Reader.

Join Laura for a discussion with Samhita Mukhopadhyay exploring her newest book, The Myth of Making It. The former executive editor of Teen Vogue brings to this conversation her experiences of workplace reckoning to help us reimagine what work can be when we are tired, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of hustle culture. Samhita Mukhopadhyay is is the former executive editor of Teen Vogue and Feministing and the current editorial director at the Meteor. Her writing has appeared in The Cut, Vanity Fair, Vogue, The Atlantic, and The Nation.

Join Laura and Adrian as they talk with Vanessa Angélica Villarreal about her newest book, Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders. In this conversation, the crew discusses topics like the queered pop culture icons of the 90's, exploring gender expression as a racialized teenager, and the work of remembering after erasure. Come join Vanessa Angélica Villarreal and our very own Laura Goode for an event on August 7th, 7:00pm at 9th Ave Green Apple Books! Vanessa Angélica Villarreal is a is a poet, essayist, and first-generation Mexican immigrant born in the Rio Grande Valley and raised in Houston, Texas. An accoladed writer, Vanessa is a recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award and winner of the John A. Robertson Award for Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters.

Sarah Manguso joins Laura to talk about her newest book, Liars. Telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, Liars depicts the slow and normalized forms of abuse and misogyny baked into marriage. Pre-order liars now, for release on July 23rd. Sarah Manguso's book tour comes to San Francisco on Wednesday, July 24, 2024 at 7:00pm @ The Booksmith! Details and RSVP here. Sarah Manguso is a poet and author of nine books. Her poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine. Her work has been recognized by an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and her writing has been translated into twelve languages.

Jessica Calarco joins Laura and Adrian to unpack her newly released book, Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Social Safety Net. They discuss the histories and the sociological interviews central to Calarco's book, painting a picture of the women who are tasked with holding society together with their labor. Dr. Jessica Calarco is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert on education, families, and health decision-making. Her award-winning research reveals how structures power and privilege maintain socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, and gender inequalities in these settings. She is the author of Negotiating Opportunities, A Field Guide to Grad School, and most recently Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Social Safety Net.

Author and self-described "soccer mom Simone de Beauvoir" Lyz Lenz makes a triumphant return to the pod to discuss her new book THIS AMERICAN EX-WIFE with Laura and Adrian. (Please refer to TFP Episode 7 from December 2020 for Lyz's first mid-derecho podcast appearance!) Her third book in five years, THIS AMERICAN EX-WIFE brings Lenz's characteristic blend of incisive sociological research and searing personal commentary to a highly relevant post-pandemic issue: divorce. Discussion topics include how Laura and Lyz just missed each other in the early-2000s Twin Cities, why the movie Fargo is the Beetlejuice of the Midwest, and what we really talk about when we talk about women and divorce. 

After a stunning revelation about a life-changing moment THE Dr. Roxane Gay offered Laura, Adrian and Laura join acclaimed memoirist Nicole Chung to discuss her second book, A Living Remedy. Following the contours of A Living Remedy, this discussion travels through the national tragedy of American healthcare, what an elite education and successful writing career can and can't do for class mobility, and much more.

Laura interviews novelist Lydia Kiesling about her second novel Mobility. Related discussion topics also include the astrology of The Sopranos (Laura and Lydia are both Christopher suns, Mobility's protagonist Bunny Glenn is more of a Meadow rising), the '90s in girlhood, the time Lydia joined a panel Laura organized at Stanford with a newborn on her chest, how mothers write whole books in stolen moments, and what we really talk about when we talk about girlbosses in the oil and gas industry.

Laura and Adrian embark on their new series: feminism and the horror genre. We dedicate the first episode of this series to two favorites of ours: Hollywood treasure Sigourney Weaver and slimy aliens with acid for blood. A discussion of 1986’s Aliens, horror and motherhood, and dueling queens.

This episode is basically a PSA: if you’re not watching the Australian feminist crime show Deadloch, then Laura, Adrian and guest Moira Donegan have one question for you: why not? Depressed industrial towns, toxic masculinity, lesbians, a four-hour movie called ‘Poseidon’s Uterus’: this show has everything, and we’re here for all of it.

Join us for the first episode of the all-new show In Bed With The Right. For their inaugural episode, Moira and Adrian delve into right-wing (ahem) contributions to the gay marriage debate. Ten years ago the Supreme Court decided Windsor v. US and Hollingsworth v. Perry, which together spelled the beginning of the end of the gay marriage debate (gay marriage would be established nationwide in Obergefell v. Hodges two years later). But did the issue really go away? How did the terms of the debate back then on the right influence today's moral panics, how do they motivate a far-right Supreme Court? Follow the show to hear more!

Midge Decter (1927-2022) has often been called the "grandmother of neoconservatism" -- hers was in some ways a pretty classic trajectory, from New Deal liberalism to profound unease with the social movements of the 1960s, to the center of the conservative movement and Republican politics. But unlike most of her fellow neocons, Midge Decter always framed her trajectory quite openly in terms of gender: repulsion from a certain kind of women's liberation, and attraction to a certain kind of masculinity. In this episode, Moira and Adrian delve into the weird, cantankerous world of Midge Decter with the co-hosts of Know Your Enemy, Matt Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell.

Get a sneak peek at the upcoming, all-new show In Bed With the Right hosted by Moira Donegan and TFP's very own Adrian Daub.

After a few months of absence, your trusty co-hosts return to tell you about new projects, new episodes, and new friends of the pod! Live from cyberspace, it's ... a guestless update spectacular!

Join us for the glorious return of friend of the pod Dr. Anthony C. Ocampo as we talk about his fantastic new book Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons. Anthony Christian Ocampo, Ph.D. is Professor of Sociology at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He is the author of Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons and The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race, which has been featured on NPR, NBC News, Literary Hub, and in the Los Angeles Times. He is an Academic Director of the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity and the co-host of the podcast Professor-ing. His writing has appeared in GQ, Catapult, BuzzFeed, Los Angeles Review of Books, Colorlines, Gravy, Life & Thyme, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. Raised in Northeast Los Angeles, he earned his BA in comparative studies in race and ethnicity and MA in modern thought and literature from Stanford University and his MA and PhD in sociology from UCLA.