Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and An Answer with Michele C. Hollow
Michele Hollow and I met many years ago when we were both new members of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. We’ve been following each other around the internet ever since, cheering each other on.
Michele is an award-winning writer and editor. She writes about health, mental health, autism, aging, animals, and climate. Her byline has appeared in The New York Times, Next Avenue, The Guardian, Parents, AARP, and The Costco Connection. She has also done nonprofit writing for IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare), Family Promise (a nonprofit that helps homeless families), and the Simons Foundation (an autism research nonprofit).
She is the author of The Everything Guide to Working with Animals (Adams Media), which came out in March 2009, and a middle grade biography on the Grateful Dead, which was updated and reissued in 2019. Her first historical novel for middle grade readers came out on September 10, 2024. It’s called Jurassic Girl and is about Mary Anning’s first major fossil discovery at age 12. This was back in 1811. The men in the London Geological Society called her a fraud; they didn’t believe a girl could make such an amazing find. Mary triumphed and today she’s known as the “Mother of Paleontology.”
Michele lives in NJ with her husband, Steven, and their rescue cat Chai. She has two sons.
Take it away, Michele:
What path led you to Mary Anning? And why do you think it is important to tell her story for younger readers today?
As a journalist, I enjoy writing about people who make a difference. I write about animal welfare and health. Interviewing everyone from a professional violinist who serenades formerly abused dogs at the ASPCA on his day off to professional clowns and vaudevillians who bring joy and laughter to Alzheimer patients at hospitals uplifts my spirit. I like getting to know people who help others.
A couple of my readers told me about Mary Anning. I had not heard of her. I did a bit of digging online. A handful of sites popped up. I learned she was a fossil hunter who discovered an ichthyosaurus, which translates to fish lizard. I later found out the ichthyosaurus is neither a fish nor a lizard. It’s in the reptile family.
What struck me about this discovery was that at the time, no one was certain what she found. Many people in her hometown of Lyme Regis, UK, thought it was a crocodile. This was in 1811 when Mary was 12 years old. Imagine being 12 and unearthing a creature no one has seen before. This was at a time when most people didn’t believe in extinction. They didn’t believe an entire species would die out.
In addition to making such a major discovery at age 12, Mary was poor and self-educated. Back then most people paid to attend school. Mary’s family didn’t have money to send her or her brother Joseph to school.
Many of the men at London’s Geological Society thought Mary was a fraud. Females did not get credit in scientific journals back then. The London Geological Society credited the man who purchased the fossil from Mary as the discoverer.
I wrote Jurassic Girl for middle grade students because Mary was a remarkable 12-year-old. I believe children would find her story relatable. Often young children don’t get the credit they deserve from adults. Reading about Mary’s perseverance and triumphs encourage readers of all ages.
How do you walk the line between historical fact and fiction in an historical novel?
This was the tricky part. I work as a journalist. One of the first internships I had while in college was working in the research department of the Time Life building in New York City. When I write articles, I interview experts and people experiencing issues that we can learn from.
I don’t own a time machine so I couldn’t go back in time and interview Mary or any of her family. I looked up books about Mary and found The Fossil Hunter by Shelley Emling. It’s a biography about Mary Anning.
While reading the book, I learned about the Lyme Regis Museum. About a year ago, the museum opened a Mary Anning wing. Lyme Regis is part of the Jurassic Coast. Today, tourists fossil hunt at the same seaside that Mary did more than 200 years ago.
The Fossil Hunter mentioned the research team at the Lyme Regis Museum. I contacted them, told them I was writing a book about Mary, and asked if I could send them questions. I sent lots of questions, and the researchers at the museum were kind enough to answer them.
In my book’s introduction, I told my readers that facts are important when writing about history and historical figures. I stated I couldn’t interview Mary or anyone else from that period so made up the dialogue. That’s where the “fiction” part comes in.
When you talk to children about Mary Anning, what surprises them most about her story?
Most here in the U.S. are not aware of her. In the UK, Jurassic Girl is doing well because many people there know about her. Last year the UK introduced a Mary Anning postage stamp.
What stood out to me was a recent interaction I had with other science writers. A few female writers complained that women scientists don’t always get credit for their work in scientific journals. Women in science even today have to fight for recognition.
When I addressed four fourth grade classes at an elementary school, many of the girls came up to me at the end of my talk, raised a fist, and said “Girl Power!” I believe girls understand that doors aren’t always open.
This statue in New York City is named “Dinosaur,” acknowledging the relationship between dinosaurs and modern pigeons.
The girls and the boys I talk to at schools love learning about Mary Anning. Many have read and enjoyed Jurassic Girl. They love everything having to do with dinosaurs. They understand that dinosaurs evolved into birds. I tell them if they want to see a live dinosaur to go outside and watch the pigeons and other birds in their neighborhoods.
My readers are smart.
A question from Michele: I’m curious if you have discussed The Dragon from Chicago with children. I know it’s for adults. I believe young adults and mature children would find the book fascinating. So, if you are so inclined, how would you talk to children about Sigrid Schultz?
I think the odds that anyone would ask me to talk to elementary school students about Sigrid Schultz are small, particularly in today’s world when there is an impulse to protect children from learning about the bad stuff. That said, if I were given the opportunity I would focus on three big-picture issues: what the newspaper business was like for women in the early to mid twentieth century, Sigrid’s courage in reporting on the Nazis, and the importance of reporters in keeping readers informed about what is happening in the world.
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Interested in learning more about Michele C Hollow and her work?
Check out some of her articles here
Check out her web page about Jurassic Girl here:
Buy Jurassic Girl here
Follow her on Bluesksy: @michelechollow.bsky.social
Follow her on Facebook: Michele C Hollow
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Come back tomorrow for three questions and an answer with best-selling science writer Dava Sobel, whose most recent book deals with Marie Curie and the forgotten women scientists who worked with her.
Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Vanda Krefft
Vanda Krefft is the author of Expect Great Things!, a social history of the famed Katharine Gibbs School and its impact on the American workplace for women. The book tells the lively, unlikely story of Katharine Gibbs herself and celebrates the many pathfinding achievements of her school’s graduates during the early to mid-20th century. Expect Great Things! (Algonquin Books, 2025) is available today wherever you buy or order your books.
Vanda’s previous book,The Man Who Made the Movies (HarperCollins, 2017), is the first in-depth biography of Twentieth Century Fox founder William Fox and reveals Fox’s many pivotal contributions to the American film industry as well as the shocking events that ended his career. Previously, Vanda wrote about the entertainment industry for leading national magazines and syndicated news services. Her work has appeared in Elle, Redbook, Woman’s Day, Woman’s World, and the Los Angeles Times.
Take it away, Vanda!
What path led you to the Katharine Gibbs School?
I like people who come out of nowhere and do the unexpected. My first book, The Man Who Made the Movies (HarperCollins, 2017), was a biography of 20th Century Fox founder William Fox, who created one of Hollywood’s great movie studios and profoundly shaped not only the art of film, but also the industry’s technology and business structure. Fox grew up in dire poverty on New York’s Lower East Side and had only a third-grade education. Similarly unlikely was the success of Katharine Gibbs and her elegant, landmark school for women.
I had been vaguely familiar with the Katharine Gibbs School, which had its glory days in the mid-20th century and which, after the Gibbs family sold the business in 1968, slowly slid downhill under corporate ownership until permanently closing in 2011. When a friend suggested Katharine Gibbs as a subject for my second book, I was skeptical. I’d always assumed that founder Katharine Gibbs was a stuffy, conservative, Seven Sisters-type New England aristocrat—nothing like jumping to conclusions based on a name!—and that her school aimed to suppress young women’s ambitions by training them as secretaries. Quite the opposite, I discovered, after doing some preliminary research. In fact, Katharine Gibbs came from a small Midwestern town where her father slaughtered hogs for a living, had only a high school education, and had never worked outside the home before finding herself a near-broke middle-aged widow.
In fact, she started her school not to reinforce the status quo but to upend it. Having been betrayed three times by her belief that male family members would always provide for and protect her financially—the last straw was her husband’s dying in 1909 without a will—she was determined that what had happened to her should never have to happen to any other woman. And so, tapping long-dormant assertiveness and courage, Katharine Gibbs built a tremendously successful business with principal locations on New York’s Park Avenue and in Boston’s Back Bay.
Her mission: to give women the skills and knowledge so they could always earn a good, independent living. In an era replete with gender bias, she figured, that meant training them to use executive secretary positions as a springboard into management. Students learned not only typing and stenography, but also academic subjects taught by professors from elite universities. A sort of Trojan Horse campaign, it worked. Among the 50,000 Gibbs graduates by 1968, many became leaders across all facets of American life. It was deeply rewarding to tell the stories of these “hidden figures” of the women’s movement who helped lay the foundation for today’s more equitable working world.
We’re all familiar with the challenges of finding sources for writing about women from the distant past. What are the challenges of writing about women from the early and middle twentieth century?
Massive challenges! In general, my ladies—yes, “ladies,” because in their era, the term primarily connoted discernment, graciousness, and consideration for others—were not firebrands or banner-carrying feminists. They were women who started in the trenches, typing and taking dictation, and worked their way up gradually to leadership positions. At Gibbs, they were trained to camouflage their ambitions with a smile, correct speech, cooperation, and a ladylike hat and white gloves. (That didn’t mean they were pushovers or doormats. The Gibbs placement office assured them they could always quit, with another good opportunity ready at hand.) But because Gibbs women worked within a culture that generally regarded female employees as inferior and/or biding their time till they landed a husband, their achievements were often ignored.
For instance, having learned that in 1930, Gibbs graduate Mary Sutton Ramsdell became one of the first two female Massachusetts State Police patrol officers, I thought that surely the Boston Globe would have covered such a milestone event. Yet not a word on its pages, let alone a photo. Likewise, I found nothing of any substance in mainstream publications about Joan M. Clark who, with her Gibbs education but no college degree, rose from a secretarial job with the US army to become Ambassador to Malta and then head of the US Foreign Service.
But thank goodness for the internet and its rich, deep, and sometimes obscure resources. Via ancestry.com, historical newspaper databases, and unending Google searches, I tracked down family members and friends of Gibbs graduates, found oral histories in archival collections, and located some extensive collections of personal papers in university libraries. Here was one advantage of the time frame. Newspapers proliferated in the US before and during the early days of television. While overwhelmingly they tended to report on women only when they got engaged or married, once in a while I found breadcrumb information about dates, family history, and employment.
Following those clues led to first-hand interviews with Gibbs graduates and their descendants. While some former students were in their eighties or nineties, all those I reached were mentally sharp, with vivid recollections, good humor, and unfailing cooperation—delightful to speak with. Their family members and friends were also extremely helpful, providing illuminating personal details. I would encourage anyone researching this time frame to act fast to get firsthand testimony. Write a letter, pick up the phone, send emails to potential sources and people who knew them (and keep trying if you don’t get an answer right away), ask about scrapbooks and photos and other memorabilia, ask who else might be helpful. Yours may be the last chance to save a valuable piece of the past.
Was there a woman you were sad to leave out?
Not one, but many. The ones I didn’t know about because their achievements hadn’t turned up anywhere in my research. I’m sure there were many unrecognized, uncelebrated Gibbs graduates. One of my early research tasks was to go to Brown University’s Hay Library, home of the Katharine Gibbs School Records, where I scanned every single page of every single Gibbs yearbook they had. It wasn’t a complete collection, and some of the branches of the school didn’t have yearbooks, but something was better than nothing. As I looked at the student headshots and read their comments, it was clear that these young women had great energy, optimism, and potential. But so many times, when I searched beyond for information about them, nothing turned up.
Among the Gibbs women I did profile, I regretted not being able to tell the full story of Myrna Custis. There she was, a lone Black face among the students in the 1956 yearbook of the New York Gibbs School. Race was a complicated issue for the Gibbs School in these mid-century years. I found no evidence that school ever discriminated on the basis of race, religion, or ethnic background. To the contrary, all indications were that the faculty advocated progressive social attitudes—such as pushing back if a boss tried to dissuade them from hiring a Black employee.
More likely, the fact that Myrna Custis was the first Black student to appear in the extant Gibbs yearbooks reflected grim socio-economic facts. That is, the Gibbs School was expensive and most Black families earned substantially less than white families. Then why didn’t the school offer scholarships to help recruit Black students? That raises another, thornier question: would it have been ethical to take two years of a young woman’s life to encourage her hopes and prepare her for a job that almost certainly wouldn’t exist for her upon graduation? The Gibbs placement department well knew the attitudes of employers and no laws as yet prohibited racial discrimination.
I would have loved to ask Myrna or her family members what led her to enroll at Gibbs, what dreams she had then, how the other students and faculty treated her, and what happened to her out in the working world.
For all the Gibbs stories that I missed, I hope that readers will contact me to fill me in on more of this important hidden history. (https://www.vandakrefft.com/contact)
A question from Vanda: You know so much about otherwise forgotten or marginalized women’s history—was there anything in the book that surprised you?
I can honestly say that the biggest surprise was the underlying mission of the school. Even though I was aware of the fact that executive secretaries were (and are) often powerful figures in the organizations they worked for, I, too, assumed that the school was fundamentally conservative in its goals. Once I let go of that assumption, I was ready to be amazed. (And you did in fact amaze me, over and over again.)
One story in particular caught my imagination: Joye Hummel, who was an important writer in the early days of the Wonder Woman comics. Her story was definitely downplayed in other accounts I had read about the creation of my favorite super hero!
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Interested in learning more about Vanda and her work? Check out her website at https://www.vandakrefft.com/
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Come back tomorrow for three questions and an answer with Michele C. Hollow, the author of Jurassic Girl.
Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions and an Answer with Sara Catterall
Sara Catterall and I have been following each other around the internet since we met as reviewers for Shelf Awareness, a shockingly long time ago. I’ve been looking forward to her biography of Amelia Bloomer ever since she began posting about it. As you’ll see below, bloomers were only a small part of Bloomer’s life.
Sara is a writer with a Drama degree from NYU, and an MLIS from Syracuse University. She was born in Ankara and grew up in South Minneapolis. She has worked as a librarian at Cornell University, as a reviewer and interviewer for Shelf Awareness, and as a professional book indexer. Her work has been published in the NEH’s Humanities magazine and The Sun, and she co-authored Ottoman Dress and Design in the West: A Visual History of Cultural Exchange. She lives with her family near Ithaca, New York, serves on the Executive Board of Buffalo Street Books in Ithaca, and is a member of Biographers International.
Take it away, Sara!
Photo credit: Edna Brown
Many of my readers will recognize the name Amelia Bloomer. Are there particular challenges in writing about women who people think they know something about?
I think that her name recognition helped me more than challenged me. I was first inspired to look up more about her because of it. Once I realized there was much more to her career, I kept a file of misinformation about her starting in 1851 right up to the current news. And I thought a lot about what those wrong ideas served, and why on earth people are still repeating them after so long. Why she comes up more often than some of her much more influential or scandalous peers. Also, though that viral incident of the “short dress and trousers” is far from her whole story, it does echo through her life. And they make a great hook! Even when people haven’t heard of Bloomer, they have heard of bloomers.
The thing most of us know about Amelia Bloomer is her championship of “rational dress” in the form of the “bloomers” that came to bear her name. How did dress reform fit into her larger career as a suffragist and social advocate?
In the more general sense of her advocacy for women’s personal and political freedom. She never considered dress reform one of her primary causes. She came to it by way of alternative medicine. Bloomer was chronically ill herself, with serious GI issues and daily headaches starting in her youth, possibly because of a bad bout of malaria, and possibly because of the mercury treatments that were common at that time. Tight clothes are fine when you’re healthy, but if you aren’t, and a lot of people had uncurable chronic ailments in the 19th century, switching to loose clothes can give some relief. “The Turkish dress” had been worn by white women since the 18th century as a political statement and for exercise and leisure, and was considered a feminine alternative to the clothing men wore. Also, in the 1840s, women’s clothing was not just tight, it was heavy and the hemlines trailed on the ground, which made it hard to work or walk in. Bloomer gave up corsets before she put on “the Turkish Dress” and she blamed her sister’s postpartum death on burdensome clothing. She was also known for walking so fast everywhere that her own husband, who was nearly a foot taller, could barely keep up with her. So the short dress and trousers appealed to Bloomer and her friends, and to other women who wore it before she did, for their physical comfort and freedom, without giving up modesty. You had to be a nonconformist, that’s for sure, but some women who wore it were not in favor of woman suffrage, and some women who kept wearing long skirts, were.
What is the most surprising thing you found doing research for your work?
So many! But one was how broad-minded Bloomer was about gender expression through clothes, given that she was born in 1818 and had a conservative rural upbringing. She had no problem with the idea of men wearing “women’s clothes” if they found them comfortable and liked them. Another was her clash with Frederick Douglass, and her friends Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, over the question of allowing men to be controlling officers in the one-year-old New York Women’s Temperance Society. Douglass, Stanton, and Anthony wanted the most educated, experienced, and influential officers possible, which at that time mostly meant men, and they wanted to focus on women’s rights rather than temperance. Bloomer felt that it was wrong to change the mission of the organization after a year of fundraising for a woman-controlled temperance society, and that women needed to keep control of the funds and the power for a while to gain confidence and learn how to manage an organization. This incident is well documented, including Douglass’s aggravated report of the meeting in his paper, and her reply in hers, but as far as I could see, no-one had written it up before.
Great cover!
A question from Sara: Other than Bloomer and Sigrid Schultz (I loved The Dragon From Chicago and gave it to friends for Christmas!), who are some Midwestern historical women that you think deserve a more national fame than they’ve had so far?
How to chose?
The first one that comes to mind is Indiana-born novelist Gene Stratton Porter (1863-1924). I first read one of her novels, A Girl of the Limberlost when I was nine or ten. I still read it every year or two. The more I learn about her, the more amazing she is. She was a best-selling novelist in the early twentieth century, an early conservation activist, and one of the first women to form a movie production company.
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Interested in learning more about Sara Catterall and her work?
Check out her website: https://saracatterall.com/
Follow her on Bluesky: @scatterall.bsky.social
Follow her on Instagram: saracatterall
Buy the book here,or at your favorite purveyor of books.
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Come back tomorrow for three questions and an answer with Vanda Krefft, author of Expect Great Things, the history of the surprisingly subversive Katharine Gibbs School.