Public Radio KCUR Radio Panel – LGBTQ & Our Hair – Tuesday May 21 at 11am EST
On Tuesday morning, May 21, I’ll be part of a panel talking about hair and identity particularly as it relates to LGBTQ issues on an NPR station KCUR 89.3 in Kansas City, from 11am to 11.40am EST. The show also streams live at kcur.org. Twitter handle: @KCURCST
As most of you know, I’m the editor of ME, MY HAIR AND I: 27 WOMEN UNTANGLE AN OBSESSION.
Thanks for visiting.
•
The Joy of Writing Sex: A Guide for Fiction Writers, first published in 1996, has led me to all sorts of conversations and invitations. I’ve gotten letters about love from prisoners, accolades from writers I admire, and given workshops and talks at libraries, writers’ conferences, and universities.
One of the more unusual invitations was to join a conversation about l’affair Clinton-Lewinsky, days after the scandal broke in January 1998.
In a New York City restaurant, I spoke with Erica Jong, Francine Prose, Nancy Friday, Patricia Marx, and others, about our initial racy thoughts on the titillating news of the President and the Intern. Francine Prose wrote up the convo for The New York Observer, and I didn’t think much about the article for 20 years.
My views, of course, changed radically as the story developed and darkened in hideous ways. More recently, we’ve examined the matter through the #MeToo lens, and that’s now part of the story. But those first few days were full of jokes and innuendos and saucy what-would-you-have-done conversations.
Though it’s hard to remember now, Clinton was something of a rock star president, and his personnel decisions and policies promoted women and women’s rights. He’s the guy who made Ruth Bader Ginsburg a justice of the Supreme Court. Sitting around that restaurant table 20 years ago, for that moment in time, we were wannabe groupies. The Observer piece captured that relatively innocent phase of the scandal.
Fast forward to the summer of 2018, when the media were getting ready to promote the 20th anniversary of Clinton’s impeachment. Slate‘s popular podcast, Slow Burn, asked me to remember the scandal as we’d experienced it back then.
You can listen to the episode, “Bedfellows,” free on iTunes. I’m talking at minutes 14.50 and 38.00, on Season2 Episode 7
Or you can read the Slow Burn transcript here.
Two months after Slow Burn posted, ABC’s 20/20 asked me to participate in a sort of repeat of that early conversation. It was a much smaller group this time—Francine Prose, Lisa Chase, and I—and the mood was decidedly different. The 20/20 show on the 20th anniversary of Clinton’s impeachment airs on ABC January 10, 2019.
I’m writing this before I have more specific information on the broadcast. Watch this space or turn on 20/20 on January 10th.
Thanks for checking in.
~ Liz