Let Genius Burn
Louisa May Alcott may be best known for the beloved book Little Women, but her story doesn’t begin or end with her famous novel. On Let Genius Burn, we separate the layers of Louisa’s life to learn more about who she really was--and all the ways her legacy continues to resonate today. We’ll explore the traumatic year of her childhood spent in an experimental utopian community, her service as a Civil War nurse, her final years of wealth and celebrity as a children’s author--and more intimate details and little-known stories of Louisa’s life. Instead of a retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s biography, each episode in the 8-part series examines Louisa's life through a different lens--Louisa as a celebrity, writer, activist, daughter, and more-- highlighting her complexity as a person, woman, and historical figure. Ahead of her time, Louisa railed against the limitations of her gender and fought for women’s suffrage. She craved literary greatness, but was weighed down by the financial needs of her family. Through writing scandalous Gothic thrillers, she found a way to voice her own inner turmoil. In the end, she achieved extraordinary financial success, but creative fulfillment remained elusive.We’ll examine all of this and more on Let Genius Burn. Find more on Instagram and Facebook @letgeniusburn or at letgeniusburn.com.
Let Genius Burn
Alcott in Our Own Time
In this episode, where the title nods to a seminal Alcott text, Alcott in Her Own Time, edited by Daniel Shealy, Jamie and Jill reconnect about what has changed since they first began making Let Genius Burn in the winter of 2019-2020. We discuss what we are currently reading and thinking about in regards to Alcott.
For Jamie, that's thinking about the paths for women, including connections to the novel Dream Count by Chimamanda Adichie and Spinster by Kate Bolick. She relates these questions to Taylor Swift's recent engagement, about which she is feeling conflicted. She also speaks about trauma and neurodivergence, particularly in relation to Karyn Valerius's work: "'Is the Young Lady Mad?' Psychiatric Disability in Louisa May Alcott's Fiction," wondering if Alcott's lifelong struggle with "moodiness" would be seen differently by today's standards.
Jill talks about books she has recently been reading, including Little Women at 150, The Afterlife of Little Women by Beverly Lyon Clark, and Alcotts: Biography of a Family by Madelon Bedell. She gives an in-depth look at an article entitled "Family and Fortune: Louisa May Alcott, Inheritance, and the Legacy of Aunts" by Susan S. Williams, talking about economics and aunthood. Jill is excited about the idea of chosen family and an expansive definition of family that puts our ideas of Little Women as a typical-nuclear-family story through a different lens.
We wrap up by talking about Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation, a recent favorite of both hosts, by author and scholar Tiya Miles. The book focuses on women in the outdoors, and it brings into focus athleticism, outdoors(wo)manship, and connections to nature, classifying Alcott as a nature-writer.
Bibliography:
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Dream Count: A Novel. United States, Knopf Canada, 2025.
Bolick, Kate. Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own. United States, Crown Publishers, 2015.
Miles, Tiya. Wild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation. United States, W. W. Norton, 2023.
Little Women at 150. Ed. Daniel Shealy. United States, University Press of Mississippi, 2022.
Valerius, Karyn. "'Is the Young Lady Mad?': Psychiatric Disability in Louisa May Alcott's Fiction." Literatures of Madness: Disability Studies and Mental Health. Switzerland, Springer International Publishing, 2019.
Williams, Susan S. "Family and fortune: Louisa May Alcott, inheritance, and the legacy of aunts." The New England Quarterly 93.1 (2020): 48-73.