The Only Woman in the Room

What do I mean by “The Only Woman in the Room”?

To me, the phrase “The Only Woman in the Room” is most meaningful as a metaphor: it captures the isolation and invisibility that so many women, of every background, race, and religion, have felt in a world where men have been assigned more value and visibility, and given more permanence – where men get to leave a larger footprint than women.

Think of “The Only Woman in the Room” as a way to connect the dots between women, past and present. I’ll explore how women have historically negotiated their world, and how power systems shaped, and continue to shape, women’s bodies, minds, and lives. In twice-monthly posts, I’ll think about where women are, where we’ve been, and where we might go next.

That’s the main thrust of it. But I won’t write only about women because, well, in this gendered world we are all connected.

Along the way, I’ll share scenes from my life as a writer and historian. I’ve had some real adventures as a historian, some lucky discoveries, and plenty of quieter moments, full of reflection. I’ve found that writing and thinking about people of the past, unearthing their stories, teaches us as much about ourselves as it does about people who lived long ago.

I’ll write about that too.

Why Subscribe? (Besides the fact that it’s free)

Subscribe because you’re interested in history and women’s place in it, and because you support the work that feminism does. Subscribe because you enjoy good writing (I promise to make it my best). Subscribe because you think that history matters and because the only way we’re going to build a better world is to learn from the past.

A Little Bit About Me

One way or another, I have been writing about women and power for a long time. I’ve published several books, most recently Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power (2023). Young Queens was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (biography), long-listed for the inaugural Women’s Prize in Non-Fiction and for the American Library in Paris Book Award.

In an earlier life, I was an Associate Professor of French Literature at The George Washington University in Washington DC. In grad school, I couldn’t decide between a history degree and a literature degree, so I ended up in Comparative Literature in an attempt to do both. I left academia many years ago for a writing life, but truth is, you can never really leave scholarship behind. Now I try to let my training as a scholar inform my writing, to turn archival work into story. My favorite part of being an academic was the teaching. I think writing is a form of teaching, too, just not in a classroom.

I lived for a time with my family in London, and still try to spend as much time there as possible, although current projects are taking me with increasing frequency to…Paris.🇫🇷 I mostly love writing and sometimes hate writing, and have no idea who I would be without it.