Audrey Clare Farley is in conversation with Carrie Callaghan about her work and her newest book, The Unfit Heiress.

For readers of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and The Phantom of Fifth Avenue, The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt is a page-turning drama of fortunes, eugenics and women's reproductive rights framed by the sordid court battle between Ann Cooper Hewitt and her socialite mother.

Audrey Clare Farley is a writer, book reviewer, and historian of twentieth-century American fiction and culture. Having earned a PhD in English from University of Maryland, College Park in 2017, she occasionally lectures in history and literature at local universities. Her essay on Ann Cooper Hewitt, published in July 2019 in Narratively, was the publication’s second most-read story of the year. Her writing on the eugenics movement and other topics has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Public Books, Lady Science, Longreads, and Marginalia Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor. She lives in Hanover, Pennsylvania.

Carrie Callaghan is the author of the historical novels A Light of Her Own (2018) and Salt the Snow (2020). Her short stories have been published in multiple literary journals, and she is a senior editor with the Washington Independent Review of Books. She lives in Maryland with her family and three ridiculous cats. She loves seasons of all kinds, history, and tea.

Writers LIVE programs are supported in part by a bequest from The Miss Howard Hubbard Adult Programming Fund.

Recorded On: Thursday, May 6, 2021