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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast 14e: The Highwaywoman Special

Saturday, September 30, 2017 - 10:41

When I expanded the LHMPodcast to a weekly schedule in August, I set up a rotating set of four monthly segments: On the Shelf (general discussion and listener questions), Author Interview, Author Book Appreciation, and the Historic Essay that I'd started out with. But four times a year, there's going to be a fifth Saturday in the month. For the moment, I'm planning to use those for some random surprise topics--something intentionally different from anything I do in the other segments. I also have some exciting long-term ideas that I may be ready to share soon.

The Highwaywoman Special is the first of these Week 5 surprises. I decided to take a trope that has some popularity in lesbian historic fiction and look at it from several angles: the historic roots, the literary history, and a discussion of some lesbian novels featuring the motif. So you get the history of some notorious female highwaymen, a few ballads, a discussion of some popular themes in highwayman fiction, and micro-reviews of five books that feature unexpected romance when the masked stranger on the road turns out to be a woman.

I'm adding another feature for some of the podcast episodes: transcripts! Because I work very closely from scripts for the history essays and On the Shelf segments, providing a transcript is simply a matter of proofreading the original script against what ended up on the recording. I won't be able to provide transcripts for the interview segments, unfortunately, becasue I simply don't have the time to do the transcription. To find the transcript for an episode, find the show in the cumulative index and click on the link that says "transcript". The transcripts appear as part of my blog feed, so the ones for older episodes will be backdated to have the date when the original show was released.

Have an idea for a Week 5 Special? Or a question about pre-20th century lesbian history or literature you'd like me to answer? Just click on the Contact link at the top of the page.

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