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PODCAST

In Walks a Woman

Books, History, Culture, Woman"s POV

We explore ideas from a woman"s point of view. Think of us as the critical-thinking crossroads of literature, popular fiction, storytelling, history, feminism, anthropology, and pop culture. At the center of it all are these 2 questions: do we create stories, or do stories create us? Either way, since stories influence us, can we change stories that cause harm? Sonja and Vanessa, experienced teachers of history and literature, make the pod educational, engaging, and relatable. Support us on Patreon:

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All Episodes

01:04:23

S4 E8 The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/11/21

WARNING: This episode contains SPOILERS!!!!In 1959, one hundred and sixty five years after Ann Radcliffe’s THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO, one might reasonably have thought that there was nothing new to be found under the gloomy Gothic moon. Such a supposition, however, would be discounting the immense talent of Shirley Jackson, one of America’s greatest writers. In THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, Jackson not only created a uniquely terrifying novel–per the master horror writer, Stephen King— but she also

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01:00:52

S4 E7 A Haunted Marriage: Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/11/14

Welcome to Manderley…or, rather, the romantic dream of Manderley. Who needs a repurposed abbey or a Alpine castle when you have the genuine fire-devastated, ivy-swarmed, misty ruins of a historic manor house along the tempestuous north Atlantic coast? As if that were not Gothic enough, let’s go all out with an orphaned heroine and a very carefully guarded family secret.SPOILERS Ahoy when you join Sonja and Vanessa as they discuss this 1938 bestseller, REBECCA. It’s often promoted as a Gothic

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00:54:26

S4 E6 The Turn of the Screw: Henry James's Ultimate...

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/11/07

If you’ve ever contemplated a governess career, perhaps Henry James’s THE TURN OF THE SCREW will give you pause. Or maybe this bite-sized Gothic ghost story will thrill you with the chance of being in charge of a beautiful English country house with no master to tell you what to do. But choose your adventure carefully because you might end up haunted and/or crazy and/or murdering someone. Join Sonja and Vanessa as they do a quick Henry James 101, and explore WITH SPOILERS his classic, 1898 ghost

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01:01:47

S4 E5 Bram Stoker's Dracula

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/10/31

In the world of the Gothic, after you bang on a few castle doors, you’re bound to run into a vampire. Bram Stoker, barrister and theater manager, notably closed out the 19th century by leaving us with his vampire masterpiece, DRACULA.In this week’s episode, Sonja and Vanessa explore how Bram Stoker brews his very own brand of Gothic. Legends of the Carpathian mountains mix with modern inventions and modern ideas, like that of the New Woman. With 3 established female vampires, a newly-minted

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01:00:25

S4 E4: Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: Gothic...

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/10/24

Who wants to break all the rules? Who wants to tear it all down and make the world anew? Emily Brontë does, that’s who. If you imagined WUTHERING HEIGHTS was some quaint Victorian romantic ghost story…think again. Honestly, there is just no other book like it. This 1848 work is truly sui generis. It’s like Emily Brontë, in her one and only book, before she dies at age 30, writes an off-the-scale earthquake into life under the unassuming and isolated Yorkshire moors, and her quake violently,

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01:03:36

S4 E3 Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/10/17

Once a genre gains popularity, here come the parodies. Jane Austen grew up, petticoats deep in Gothic novels, and Jane had thoughts on reading them, writing them, and the effect they had on women readers. Our last novel, Ann Radcliffe’s THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO is mentioned multiple times in Jane Austen’s NORTHANGER ABBEY, finished in 1799 but not published until a few months after Austen’s death in 1817.Join Sonja and Vanessa as they explore the historical and literary context of this lesser known

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00:58:25

Atlas of Unknowable Things by McCormick Templeman /...

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/10/10

McCormick Templeman’s atmospheric, twisty, gothic mystery novel, ATLAS OF UNKNOWABLE THINGS came out October 7th, and if you haven’t ordered your copy, run–don’t walk–to your local bookstore! In this special double interview, McCormick talks about her book (no spoilers!), her literary influences, her creative process, and her friend and colleague, Rachel Feder, author of THE DARCY MYTH, offers her literary expertise and gives ATLAS her highest praise, calling it a Gothic novel that is “both

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01:04:49

The Irish Goodbye with Heather Aimee O'Neill

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/10/03

Heather Aimee O’Neill published her debut novel, THE IRISH GOODBYE, on the last day of September, and it’s already started a reading wildfire: People Magazine just made it their Pick of the Week, it’s Apple Books’s October Staff Pick, and Jenna Bush Hager announced it as her “Read with Jenna” on the Today Show last week. Go, Heather! Join Sonja and Vanessa as they ask Heather about dyslexia, her early years as a poet, the mentors who inspired her, her transition from poetry to prose, the

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00:53:22

S4 E2: Mysteries Revealed! Udolpho Part 2

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/09/26

As with the first part of our Udolpho episode, this is full of spoilers, so don’t listen if you are up for reading about 300 pages (approximately half) of this Ann Radcliffe novel. However, if you are seeking a lively summary that will allow you to chat confidently about THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO at your next cocktail party, do push play.When you do, you will find yourself waist deep in banditti and pirates (which might seem like the same thing, but you’d be wrong). The story leaves the fabled

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00:54:25

S4 E1: The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe,...

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/09/26

Welcome to Season 4: “Haunting Women”!Here’s your first scare: Ann Radcliffe’s 1794 gothic classic, THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO, is 290,897 words long. For the average reader, reading at a speed of 300 WPM, that would take 13 hours and 5 minutes to read. And that does not count potty and snack breaks. If you are up for it, go for it! If not, as Sonja likes to say, we offer “Cliff’s Notes for Adults,” and we’ll bravely take you through the book. So are there spoilers in this episode? YES. YES.

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00:02:06

S3 E12 Fifty Shades of ...Something (trailer)

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/09/19

Sonja and Vanessa thought it best to put the last episode of season 3 safely on their Patreon...if you go there, you'll find out why! www.patreon.com/InWalksAWoman

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00:58:20

Whack Job: A History of Axe Murder by Rachel McCarthy...

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/09/17

In the third of our author interviews, Sonja & Vanessa are proud to feature another Lawrence, Kansas local author: Rachel McCarthy James. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because she co-authored 2017’s cold-case cracking tour-de-force, Man on the Train, in which she and her coauthor, Bill James, solve a hundred-year old serial axe murderer mystery. In her new book, Rachel traces the history of the axe as tool, weapon, and cultural artifact. Whack Job includes so many killer stories (pun

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00:51:58

S3 E12 The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/09/12

This book and this episode is like a fruit smoothie by the sunny seashore–light, sweet, gentle first love vibes. This is a YA selection we have chosen to find out what the youngest set values in romance stories. Appropriately, it is not an “E” episode–first time in the season! Sonja and Vanessa are joined again by their Designated Gen Z Reader, Sage McHenry, to better understand the meteoric rise of this book series…now television series.Unless you’ve been living under ye olde proverbial Rock, you

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00:58:26

Sad Grownups: Short Stories with Award-Winning Author...

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/09/05

Welcome to our 2nd episode of “In Walks a Woman Writer”! Amy Stuber joined us in the studio, and the time flew by. Listening to this conversation, you’ll feel like you are sitting in your favorite coffee shop with Amy who is so kind, so unassuming–and yet so ridiculously talented. Amy’s 2024 short story collection, Sad Grownups, won the prestigious Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. The collection is wide-ranging, packed with women’s experiences, and haunting in its

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00:51:27

S3 E11 A Court of Thorns and Roses: Romantasy Gateway...

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/08/29

Sonja and Vanessa go on a thrilling journey with Millennial reader and Romantasy fan/expert, Haley Bajorek. If you’ve ever wondered what Romantasy is, why it has a huge fan base, whether it’s for you, and where to start, this episode fills in all the blanks!For Gen X readers like Sonja and Vanessa who grew up on tales such as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the focus of this episode, Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (2015) is a radical departure. Dare we say a paradigm shift. Forget

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00:56:16

Midlife Abecedarian with Melissa Fite Johnson /IWAW...

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/08/27

Welcome to our first episode of “In Walks a Woman Writer”! We are proud to kick off this special author series with talented Kansas poet and veteran teacher, Melissa Fite Johnson. You are in for a treat as Melissa’s warmth will make you feel welcome, and, like Sonja and Vanessa, you’ll be grateful for Melissa’s shrewd insights about life and writing. Melissa’s third collection, Midlife Abecedarian, is filled with nostalgia, self-discovery, and a wisdom that only comes through reflecting deeply on

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00:59:53

S3 E10 The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/08/22

First, you should rush to read Sarah Waters’s The Paying Guests, a fantastic romance thriller set in 1922, post World War 1 England. We don’t give spoilers, exactly, but the historical context we cover gives you some idea of events and situations that come up in the novel. And the novel is wall-to-wall women’s issues: society’s expectations of decorum, cooking, cleaning, birth control, wifely duties, sex, widowhood, spinsterhood, motherhood, and a fair amount about 1920's housekeeping. Sonja

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00:55:02

S3E9 A Farewell to Romance? Ernest Hemingway's A...

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/08/15

Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 A Farewell to Arms is almost always captioned as a tragic romance. Is it? Tragic, yes. Romance…debatable. Is Frederick Henry a compelling romantic hero and Catherine Barkley an inspiring romantic heroine? Join Sonja and Vanessa as they run through the text (SPOILER ALERT), and give their verdict on the love story.This show will also offer you a mini Hemingway bio, an explanation of his writing philosophy and style, and it highlights distinctions between warfare on the

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00:54:44

S3E8 Romance in the Great War: In Memoriam by Alice Winn

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/08/08

Sonja and Vanessa LOVE Alice Winn’s 2024 novel, In Memoriam, a moving love story of two soldiers fighting on the fabled Western Front in World War 1. Winn nimbly weaves numerous, real historical events through the friends-to-lovers romance of two teens who fight bravely for their country but have to keep their love secret from that very government–on pain of death.Our goal in this episode is not to summarize or spoil the novel, but rather to act as a useful companion to the text. You could listen

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00:48:15

S3E7: 21st Century Regency Romance: Julie Ann Long’s...

In Walks a Woman ·

2025/08/01

Sonja and Vanessa dip into a wonderful historical romance novel by Julie Ann Long, The Perils of Pleasure, Book 1 of 11 in her marvelous Pennyroyal Green series. We set up the first three chapters, but that’s just the premise of the book, and there are no spoilers. We discuss the literary lineage of regency romance novels, like this one, both to Pride and Prejudice and even to Tristan & Iseult. Sonja brings up some thought-provoking questions worth considering: What is the specific appeal

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