Send us a text Shirley M. Phillips is a pioneering female pilot and author whose new aviation memoir, How Not to Fly an Airplane, captures four decades of pilot life stories and lessons from the cockpit. From her start as a teenage student pilot in New Hampshire to becoming the first pregnant airline pilot at her company, Shirley’s career in aviation is filled with grit, humor, and resilience. In this pilot interview, Shirley shares what it’s really like to be a flight instructor, including w...
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Send us a text Shirley M. Phillips is a pioneering female pilot and author whose new aviation memoir, How Not to Fly an Airplane, captures four decades of pilot life stories and lessons from the cockpit. From her start as a teenage student pilot in New Hampshire to becoming the first pregnant airline pilot at her company, Shirley’s career in aviation is filled with grit, humor, and resilience. In this pilot interview, Shirley shares what it’s really like to be a flight instructor, including w...
Send us a text In this interview with author, lawyer, and pilot Erin Miller, we talk about her journey through the halls of congress to change federal law so she and her family could honor her WASP Grandmother, Elaine Danforth Harmon's wish to be laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery. 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...
Send us a text In this Writers' Room conversation with author Susan Tate Ankeny, author of two historical works, we talk about her journey to publish her first book, The Girl and the Bombardier: A True Story of Resistance and Rescue in Nazi Occupied-France about her father's experience in WWII, and how that led to her agent offering her the opportunity to write and publish, American Flygirl, about WWII WASP Hazel Ying Lee. Did you know you can support your local independent bookshop and...
Send us a text In this interview with author Susan Tate Ankeny, we talk about her biography of Chinese American WWII Women Air Force Service Pilot, Hazel Ying Lee, American Flygirl, the Aviatrix Book Club discussion book for May 2025. Buy the book: https://literaryaviatrix.com/book/american-flygirl/ Children's Books about Hazel: https://literaryaviatrix.com/book/the-fearless-flights-of-hazel-ying-lee/ https://literaryaviatrix.com/book/skyward-the-story-of-female-pilots-in-wwii/...
Send us a text In this interview with author Becky Aikman we talk about her new book Spitfires: The American Women Who Flew in the Face of Danger about the women who flew for the Air Transport Auxiliary in Britain. Buy the book: https://literaryaviatrix.com/book/spitfires/ The blurb: The heart-pounding true story of the daring American women who piloted the most dangerous aircraft of World War II through the treacherous skies of Britain. They were crop dusters and debutantes, ...
Send us a text In this writers' room interview I talk with Heather B. Moore, who has been writing for 20 years and is a USA Today best-selling author with over a hundred books published about her writing journey. She offers her tips on launching a writing career, how to navigate publishing, and shares how she manages her writing life. 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 availa...
Send us a text In this interview with Amanda Harrison we talk about her memoir, Solo2Darwin: In the Footsteps of Amy Johnson, in which she recounts her attempt to fly solo from England to Australia in her vintage open cockpit Tiger Moth. We also talk about the other themes shared in her book about grieving the loss of her father, her breast cancer journey, and the experience of navigating life with dyslexia. I mention Elizabeth Wein's historical fiction novels written for dyslexic and ...
Send us a text In this interview with USA Today best-selling author, Heather B. Moore, we talk about her biographical fiction of, Lady Flyer, about Nancy Harkness Love, who led the establishment of the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron at the beginning of WWII, and whose efforts were both at odds with and in support of Jackie Cochran’s initiative to create the Women Airforce Service Pilots. If you’re in Denver for WAI205, be sure to stop by the Authors Connect Booth from 2-3:30 on Friday ...
Send us a text In this interview with airline pilot and award-winning voice actress, Pamela Almand, we talk about her aviation career, how she made her way into the voice acting and narration business, and the special experience of narrating two of Amelia Earhart's books: The Fun of It and 20 Hrs. 40 Min.: Our Flight in the Friendship. Pamela is available for book narration! You can find her on social media @thecaptainsvoice and: https://www.thecaptainsvoice.com/ https://www.audio...
Send us a textIn the 1930’s, pioneering New Zealand pilot Jean Batten set multiple aviation records, including a speed record from London to Sydney, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic from East to West in 1935 (which, before reading this I routinely accredited to Beryl Markham), and first person to fly solo from London to New Zealand to prove how aviation could connect her homeland to the rest of the world. “Alone in the Sky” is an apt summation of this pilot’s jaw dropping accom...
Send us a textBefore the U.S. entered WWII, the British Royal Air Force sent prospective pilots to the U.S. for training because they didn’t have the capacity to train the numbers they needed for the fight, and America’s women pilots helped train them. New York Times and USA Today Best-Selling author Lorraine Heath explores this fascinating niche of our history in her novel The Girls of Flight City, the December 2024 Aviatrix Book Club discussion book. Lorraine was inspired by a story she rea...
Send us a textIn this interview with co-author Samantha Arrington Sliney, a USAF Judge Advocate General (JAG) and Women's Initiative Team (DAF WIT) member, we talk about the new picture book she co-authored with fellow DAF WIT member, USAF pilot Megan Biles, All the Things Our Mommy Can Do, and we dive deep into military aviation pregnancy policies. While the focus of our conversation is centered around military aviation, the questions of law and policy impacting women's careers, and the book...
Send us a textMary Jennings Hegar is the recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor, the Purple Heart, and five Air Medals for her service as an Air National Guard HH-60 Pave Hawk Combat Search and Rescue Pilot on three deployments in Afghanistan and many domestic civil humanitarian missions. When her aircraft was shot down in Afghanistan, she sustained back injuries that prevented her continued service as a pilot. The existing Ground Combat Exclusion Policy that prohibited women ...
Send us a textIn this Aviatrix Classics conversation with Guest Hosts Dr. Jacque Boyd and Captain Jenny Beatty, we welcome guest Carole Hopson, author of A Pair of Wings, to discuss the remarkable accomplishments of pioneering aviatrix Bessie Coleman. Despite all of the odds against her, Bessie learned to fly and earned her license in France in 1921, then returned to Europe to learn aerobatics before drawing mixed-race audiences to watch her perform in the U.S. Carole learned about Bessi...
Send us a textDon’t be fooled by the sweet cover of this picture book by U.S. Army AH-64 Apache combat helicopter pilots, Laura Pangallo Fryar (author) and Morgan Samuels (illustrator). In this interview we geek out on helicopter flying, military careers, “delivering justice” for U.S. ground forces, active duty parenthood, and creative pursuits—and also about their inspiring picture book, Be Something Epic. Laura is a career Army Officer who went through ROTC and, by way of Korea, German...
Send us a textIn this conversation with Kitty Banner Seemann, we talk about her spectacular experiences flying as a bush and glacier pilot in Alaska in planes full of mountain climbers, hunters, and adventurers to remote locations in some of the most challenging flight conditions imaginable, all described in her book Wings of Her Dreams: Alaska Bush and Glacier Pilot Kitty Banner.Buy the book: https://literaryaviatrix.com/book/wings-of-her-dreams-alaska-bush-glacier-pilot-kitty-banner/Did you...
Send us a textIn this episode of Literary Aviatrix Classics with guest hosts Dr. Jacque Boyd and Capt. Jenny Beatty, we discuss The Fun of It: Random Records of My Own Flying and of Women in Aviation by Amelia Earhart. This book offers fascinating insights to where aviation was at the time the book was published and how Amelia and her contemporaries imagined aviation would impact the future. We also learn from AE’s own words about her pre-aviation life, her selection and participation in the ...
Send us a textIn this Literary Aviatrix Writers' Room interview with Lola Reid Allin, she talks about her writing journey including courses at Gotham Writers in NYC, overcoming the fear of sharing personal details, hybrid-publishing with She Writes Press, book launch promotion, and her lessons learned on the value of critique. 00:00 Book Release: 'Highway to the Sky'00:25 Finding Your Voice: The Journey of a Writer18:30 Facing your fears in memoir writing24:31 Hybrid Publishing with She ...
Send us a textIn this interview with Canadian pilot Lola Reid Allin, we talk about her new memoir, launching on September 17th, 2024. 00:00 Introduction and Book Launch01:17 Synopsis and Reading09:28 Lola's Aviation Career11:59 Transitioning Beyond Flying16:01 Inspiring Others: Why did you write the book?17:34 Challenges and Discrimination: Navigating a Male-Dominated Field32:18 Balancing Motherhood and a Flying Career39:55 Exploring the World: Lola's Adventures in Travel49:28 Supporting...
Send us a textIn this Picture Book Panel discussion, we hear from five recently published authors who navigated various routes to publication including traditional, hybrid, and self-publishing to get their stories into print. They very generously share those journeys with us here—everything from the decision about which route to go, to the editing process, how they found their illustrators, what their distribution looks like, the percentage return they receive on book sales, special military/...
Send us a textJoin guest hosts Jacque Boyd, Jenny Beatty, and me as we discuss this out-of-print treasure, Neta Snook Southern’s I Taught Amelia to Fly. Through Neta’s own aviation journey, we get a very special lens into the experiences of aspiring pilots in the U.S. as they pursued their dreams during and after WWI. Her childhood stories emphasize the importance of exposing our girls to science and mechanics as that exposure imbued her with the skills and confidence to not only hold her own...
Literary Aviatrix: The Power of Story - Women in Aviation
Send us a text Shirley M. Phillips is a pioneering female pilot and author whose new aviation memoir, How Not to Fly an Airplane, captures four decades of pilot life stories and lessons from the cockpit. From her start as a teenage student pilot in New Hampshire to becoming the first pregnant airline pilot at her company, Shirley’s career in aviation is filled with grit, humor, and resilience. In this pilot interview, Shirley shares what it’s really like to be a flight instructor, including w...
