• Leadership & Development: Author Martha LaGuardia Kotite talks about her books So Others May Live, about U.S. Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers and Changing the Rules of Engagement, which features several aviatrix heroines including Tammy Duckworth, Pam Melroy,
    Jun 10 2024

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    In this interview with author and retired U.S. Coast Guard Captain Martha LaGuardia-Kotite, we talk about her career, which culminated in being recalled to active duty as the Commandant’s Press Secretary, then we get into her books - So Others May Live: Saving Lives, Defying Death; Changing the Rules of Engagement: Inspiring Stories of Courage and Leadership from Women in the Military; and My Name is Old Glory: A Celebration of the Star Spangled Banner. The first two books feature stories of incredibly inspiring women in aviation, including the U.S. Coast Guard’s first qualified female rescue swimmer, Kelly Mogk Larsen and the first Vice Commandant of any U.S. Military service, Vice Admiral Vivien Crea, along with Nicole Malachowski, the first woman Thunderbird demonstration team pilot, Senator Tammy Duckworth, U.S. Army Blackhawk pilot and combat amputee survivor, and Pam Melroy, one of only two women to command a U.S. Space Shuttle.

    Did you know you can support your local independent bookshop and me by shopping through my Bookshop.org affiliate links on my website? If a book is available on Bookshop.org, you'll find a link to it on the book page. By shopping through the Literary Aviatrix website a small portion of the sale goes to support the content you love, at no additional cost to you. https://literaryaviatrix.com/shop-all-books/

    Thanks so much for listening!

    • Stay up to date on book releases, author events, and Aviatrix Book Club discussion dates with the Literary Aviatrix Newsletter.
    • Visit the Literary Aviatrix website to find over 600 books featuring women in aviation in all genres for all ages.
    • Become a Literary Aviatrix Patron and help amplify the voices of women in aviation.
    • Follow me on social media, join the book club, and find all of the things on the Literary Aviatrix linkt.ree.


    Blue skies, happy reading, and happy listening!

    -Liz Booker


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    1 hr and 10 mins
  • Aviatrix Classics discussion with Jacque Boyd and Jenny Beatty about Louise Thaden's memoir, High, Wide, and Frightened
    Jun 5 2024

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    In this Literary Aviatrix Classics discussion with co-hosts Jacque Boyd and Jenny Beatty, we discuss Louise Thaden’s memoir, High, Wide, and Frightened, first published in 1938, two years after Thaden won the Bendix in its first co-ed year. This is a quintessential read for every pilot and avgeek, anyone who loves history, and anyone who wants a great story featuring a daring, inspiring woman who is also honest about her fears and mistakes. A beautifully written memoir, it chronicles Thaden’s record-setting flights, including speed, endurance, and altitude, and offers a first-hand account of of the 1929 Women’s Transcontinental Air Race and the 1936 Bendix. Remarkably, Louise is unusual for her times in that she continued flying after having children, and she talks about that experience here. Jacque, Jenny, and I take you through each chapter’s highlights and discuss the relevance of this story today. I hope you enjoy listening to our discussion as much as we did recording it.

    Did you know you can support your local independent bookshop and me by shopping through my Bookshop.org affiliate links on my website? If a book is available on Bookshop.org, you'll find a link to it on the book page. By shopping through the Literary Aviatrix website a small portion of the sale goes to support the content you love, at no additional cost to you. https://literaryaviatrix.com/shop-all-books/

    Thanks so much for listening!

    • Stay up to date on book releases, author events, and Aviatrix Book Club discussion dates with the Literary Aviatrix Newsletter.
    • Visit the Literary Aviatrix website to find over 600 books featuring women in aviation in all genres for all ages.
    • Become a Literary Aviatrix Patron and help amplify the voices of women in aviation.
    • Follow me on social media, join the book club, and find all of the things on the Literary Aviatrix linkt.ree.


    Blue skies, happy reading, and happy listening!

    -Liz Booker


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    1 hr and 16 mins
  • Aviatrix Writers' Room interview with bestselling author Maggie Shipstead on her classical writing education and publishing journey.
    Jun 1 2024

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    In this Literary Aviatrix Writers’ Room interview with best-selling author Maggie Shipstead we get into the details of her author journey. Maggie is an inspiration for anyone who aspires to be a professional writer. In our conversation, she talks about how a writing course with Zadie Smith during her undergrad at Harvard cemented her path as a writer. She went on to earn an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, followed by a two-year creative writing Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. Her books include the novels Seating Arrangements (2012), Astonish Me (2014), and Great Circle (2021), and a collection of short stories entitled You Have a Friend in 10A (2022). She is the recipient of the Los Angeles Times’ Book Prize for First Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and Great Circle was short-listed for the Booker Prize and the UK’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. As a travel writer, Maggie has also had articles published in Conde Nast Traveler, The New York Times, and Departures.

    Did you know you can support your local independent bookshop and me by shopping through my Bookshop.org affiliate links on my website? If a book is available on Bookshop.org, you'll find a link to it on the book page. By shopping through the Literary Aviatrix website a small portion of the sale goes to support the content you love, at no additional cost to you. https://literaryaviatrix.com/shop-all-books/

    Thanks so much for listening!

    • Stay up to date on book releases, author events, and Aviatrix Book Club discussion dates with the Literary Aviatrix Newsletter.
    • Visit the Literary Aviatrix website to find over 600 books featuring women in aviation in all genres for all ages.
    • Become a Literary Aviatrix Patron and help amplify the voices of women in aviation.
    • Follow me on social media, join the book club, and find all of the things on the Literary Aviatrix linkt.ree.


    Blue skies, happy reading, and happy listening!

    -Liz Booker


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    40 mins
  • Novelist Maggie Shipstead talks about the feral bootlegging, Alaska bush, and Air Transport Auxiliary pilot character, Marion Graves, from her best selling Great Circle.
    May 31 2024

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    In this interview with author Maggie Shipstead, we discuss her best-selling novel Great Circle. In this sweeping saga, we follow fictional pilot Marion Graves from her feral childhood in Montana where she first encounters a barnstorming pilot team and decides that flying is her life's purpose. She flies as a bootlegger transporting liquor, the flies as a bush pilot in Alaska before joining the Air Transport Auxiliary to fly during the war. Post-war, she decides to fly around the world, North to South, and disappears. The story is intercut with a modern day Hollywood actress set to play Marion in an upcoming bio-pic whose own childhood scars include the loss of her parents in a small airplane crash. Maggie talks about the inspiration for the book and the research that led to this gorgeous novel.

    Correction from the end of the interview: we will discuss the book Aviatrix, by Mary Bush Shipko, in the Aviatrix Book Club next month, and THEN we'll read The Fabulous Flying Mrs. Miller in July.

    Did you know you can support your local independent bookshop and me by shopping through my Bookshop.org affiliate links on my website? If a book is available on Bookshop.org, you'll find a link to it on the book page. By shopping through the Literary Aviatrix website a small portion of the sale goes to support the content you love, at no additional cost to you. https://literaryaviatrix.com/shop-all-books/

    Thanks so much for listening!

    • Stay up to date on book releases, author events, and Aviatrix Book Club discussion dates with the Literary Aviatrix Newsletter.
    • Visit the Literary Aviatrix website to find over 600 books featuring women in aviation in all genres for all ages.
    • Become a Literary Aviatrix Patron and help amplify the voices of women in aviation.
    • Follow me on social media, join the book club, and find all of the things on the Literary Aviatrix linkt.ree.


    Blue skies, happy reading, and happy listening!

    -Liz Booker


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    39 mins
  • Aviatrix Classics - Introducing my co-hosts, Dr. Jacque Boyd, general aviation pilot and aerospace educator, and Captain Jenny Beatty, professional airline pilot and aviation diversity advocate, both self-proclaimed aviation history and book nerds.
    May 15 2024

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    Welcome to the new ‘Literary Aviatrix Classics’ series, where I discuss books written by and about our aviatrix pioneers with my venerable co-hosts, Dr. Jacque Boyd and Captain Jenny Beatty. In this interview, we get to know Jacque and Jenny, and we announce the subject of our first ‘Classics’ discussion.

    Dr. Jacque Boyd is an educator and a general aviation pilot. She has a B.A. in Education, Psychology, and Special Education. In 1979 she was awarded the Amelia Earhart Memorial Scholarship from the Ninety-Nines for her M.Ed. in Aerospace Education. She also holds a PhD in Curriculum Development and Supervision. Her dissertation was a study of math and science education.

    Jacque's writing expertise covers several magazine columns, including the Current Issues and Tools for Schools column for Aviation for Women. She also writes extensively for The Ninety-Nines Magazine with the latest contribution being book reviews. She currently does book reviews for several publications and has experienced the fun of ghostwriting.

    Jacque is a self-admitted book-a-holic with well over 1000 volumes. The majority of the books are aviation-related and most about women's flight. She also has all her grandfather's education books from when he was a teacher in Kentucky in the late 1800s.

    Captain Jenny Beatty is a longtime airline pilot, author, and advocate for women and others underrepresented in aviation.

    Jenny’s interest in aviation’s early days stems from being in one of the few families to have three generations of women pilots. Both of her maternal grandparents learned to fly in 1930, and their daughter, Jenny’s mother, earned her pilot’s license in 1945. Following them into the air in 1981, Jenny became a flight instructor, airline pilot, check airman, and flight operations manager, and is rated to fly the B737, B747, B777, B787, DC-9, seaplanes, and gliders. In this portrait, Jenny is wearing her grandmother’s flying jacket.

    To join the Literary Aviatrix Classics conversation, Jenny draws from her collection of over 350 books and magazines by and about women and other underrepresented pilots all over the world, including rare early first editions. She is a popular writer and public speaker on historical and contemporary pilot career topics.

    Read Jenny’s articles and resources at www

    Did you know you can support your local independent bookshop and me by shopping through my Bookshop.org affiliate links on my website? If a book is available on Bookshop.org, you'll find a link to it on the book page. By shopping through the Literary Aviatrix website a small portion of the sale goes to support the content you love, at no additional cost to you. https://literaryaviatrix.com/shop-all-books/

    Thanks so much for listening!

    • Stay up to date on book releases, author events, and Aviatrix Book Club discussion dates with the Literary Aviatrix Newsletter.
    • Visit the Literary Aviatrix website to find over 600 books featuring women in aviation in all genres for all ages.
    • Become a Literary Aviatrix Patron and help amplify the voices of women in aviation.
    • Follow me on social media, join the book club, and find all of the things on the Literary Aviatrix linkt.ree.


    Blue skies, happy reading, and happy listening!

    -Liz Booker


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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • Pilot Polly Vacher talks about her record-setting solo flight from the North Pole to Antarctica to raise funds for the charity Flying Scholarships for the Disabled
    May 11 2024

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    In this interview with inspiring pilot Polly Vacher, she talks about her memoir Wings Around the World: The Exhilarating Story of One Woman’s Epic Flight from the North Pole to Antarctica. She shares how she prepared for the trip, some of the obstacles that stood in her way and how she navigated them, the very difficult decision she was faced with in trying to achieve the goal she’d prepared for over two years to accomplish, and the highlights of meeting people all across the world, all in the name of charity to raise funds for Flying Scholarships for the Disabled.

    Did you know you can support your local independent bookshop and me by shopping through my Bookshop.org affiliate links on my website? If a book is available on Bookshop.org, you'll find a link to it on the book page. By shopping through the Literary Aviatrix website a small portion of the sale goes to support the content you love, at no additional cost to you. https://literaryaviatrix.com/shop-all-books/

    Thanks so much for listening!

    • Stay up to date on book releases, author events, and Aviatrix Book Club discussion dates with the Literary Aviatrix Newsletter.
    • Visit the Literary Aviatrix website to find over 600 books featuring women in aviation in all genres for all ages.
    • Become a Literary Aviatrix Patron and help amplify the voices of women in aviation.
    • Follow me on social media, join the book club, and find all of the things on the Literary Aviatrix linkt.ree.


    Blue skies, happy reading, and happy listening!

    -Liz Booker


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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Prolific mystery writer Edith Maxwell, writing as Maddie Day, talks about her writing career and incorporating historical details about a young Amelia Earhart into her new novel A Case for the Ladies: A Dot and Amelia Mystery
    Apr 8 2024

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    In this fun interview with mystery writer Edith Maxwell, publishing under the pen name 'Maddie Day', we talk about her historical mystery, A Case for the Ladies: A Dot and Amelia Mystery, which launched in March. In it, a young Amelia Earhart, who is living in Boston, taking flying lessons on the weekends, and working at an immigrant settlement house, helps solve the mystery of a series of murders involving immigrant women. Edith, who has published over 30 books, also shares her wisdom and experience as a mystery writer.Typically a traditionally published author, Edith went out on her own to bring this story to life, so let's support her and buy (AND REVIEW) A Case for the Ladies!

    Did you know you can support your local independent bookshop and me by shopping through my Bookshop.org affiliate links on my website? If a book is available on Bookshop.org, you'll find a link to it on the book page. By shopping through the Literary Aviatrix website a small portion of the sale goes to support the content you love, at no additional cost to you. https://literaryaviatrix.com/shop-all-books/

    Thanks so much for listening!

    • Stay up to date on book releases, author events, and Aviatrix Book Club discussion dates with the Literary Aviatrix Newsletter.
    • Visit the Literary Aviatrix website to find over 600 books featuring women in aviation in all genres for all ages.
    • Become a Literary Aviatrix Patron and help amplify the voices of women in aviation.
    • Follow me on social media, join the book club, and find all of the things on the Literary Aviatrix linkt.ree.


    Blue skies, happy reading, and happy listening!

    -Liz Booker


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    36 mins
  • Bloomberg space journalist and author Loren Grush talks about her book The Six: The Untold Story of America's First Women Astronauts
    Mar 17 2024

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    In this interview with Bloomberg space journalist and author Loren Grush, we talk about her childhood growing up around Johnson Space Center with two NASA Engineers and how that led her to unearth the stories of NASA's first women astronauts.

    Did you know you can support your local independent bookshop and me by shopping through my Bookshop.org affiliate links on my website? If a book is available on Bookshop.org, you'll find a link to it on the book page. By shopping through the Literary Aviatrix website a small portion of the sale goes to support the content you love, at no additional cost to you. https://literaryaviatrix.com/shop-all-books/

    Thanks so much for listening!

    • Stay up to date on book releases, author events, and Aviatrix Book Club discussion dates with the Literary Aviatrix Newsletter.
    • Visit the Literary Aviatrix website to find over 600 books featuring women in aviation in all genres for all ages.
    • Become a Literary Aviatrix Patron and help amplify the voices of women in aviation.
    • Follow me on social media, join the book club, and find all of the things on the Literary Aviatrix linkt.ree.


    Blue skies, happy reading, and happy listening!

    -Liz Booker


    Show more Show less
    44 mins