pulp

The best stories are the juicy ones. This episode of our feminist pop culture podcast is all about pulp (timely, right?). We talk with best-selling thriller writer Chelsea Cain about how her pregnancy inspired her to get started writing gory stories and she reads us a horrific short story about a hungry zombie baby. Then, we feature a sneak-peek excerpt from Monica Nolan's new lesbian erotica pulp, Maxine Mainwearing: Lesbian Dilettante. Finally, we talk with everyone's favorite mystery writer Laura Lippman about love, money, and reality television. 

All that, in just 20 minutes. Listen in! 

Read on for the transcript of this show and other listening options.

To celebrate the release of our new Pulp issue, I dredged up a handful of pulpy 1960s bottom-of-the-barrel paperbacks from a Portland vintage store. I’ll be bringing three of these long-forgotten titles back to light this week. 

Today's title: The Bisexual Revolution (subtitle: Sex with man or woman... it's all the same to these broad-minded insatiables!)

To celebrate the release of our new Pulp issue, I dredged up a handful of pulpy 1960s bottom-of-the-barrel paperbacks from a Portland vintage store. I’ll be bringing three of these long-forgotten titles back to light this week. 

Today’s title:

The Promiscuous Breed

I'm a lifelong fan of bestselling mystery writer Laura Lippman, whose character Tess Monaghan stars in stories that are often critical of pop culture. Bitch last talked to Lippman—who's on our National Advisory Board—to mark the release of her book I'd Know You Anywhere in 2010. Since then, she has called attention to the lack of media coverage of female writers and I figured it was high time to check in with Lippman, given the release of our Pulp issue. I talked to Lippman the day after she had turned in the manuscript for her new book, about a cop who loves TV. 

I’m curious to know: you are obviously a writer and a reader of crime fiction but have you been a lifelong reader of crime fiction? And what are some of the first books you remember reading?

LAURA LIPPMAN: If you say “lifelong reader,” that goes back to Encyclopedia Brown and The Happy Hollisters.  I was not a big Nancy Drew fan because I have a really low tolerance for perfect people and Nancy is pretty perfect.  She’s not only perfect, but there are these two other girls, Beth and George, who do nothing but talk about how perfect she is.

I remember.

I don’t identify with someone like that and so I liked Encyclopedia Brown because he was smart but he had to have a girl be his muscle.  Do you remember that part?

Oh yeah.

And for some reason, I liked The Happy Hollisters and Trixie Belden. So, I was always a crime reader. It was something that gave me a lot of pleasure, and it was something about which I was never the ironic —I don’t think of it as a guilty pleasure.  I don’t even really recognize the term “guilty pleasure.”