Season 10, Episode 1 - Vanessa Riley

In this episode of History Through Fiction: The Podcast, host Colin Mustful speaks with historian and novelist Steven Leibo about the Taiping Rebellion, a sweeping 19th-century Chinese conflict that unfolded alongside the American Civil War and gave rise to the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace. Leibo explains how he uses documented events and real historical figures as the framework for his Sino-American Tales, weaving fictional characters into a family saga about people navigating Chinese and American worlds. From the Taiping movement to the Chinese Exclusion Act and the birthright citizenship case of Wong Kim Ark, the conversation reveals how lives across the Pacific connect, and why fiction can make complex history feel immediate. Leibo, a historian of Asian-Western relations with five decades of teaching experience, reflects on his research, Chinese American identity, and the power of stories to awaken curiosity. History Through Fiction brings readers and writers into stories rooted in the past. Explore our historical fiction catalog, workshops, events, and community at https://www.historythroughfiction.com.

How do books create a community beyond the page? In this episode of History Through Fiction: The Podcast, host Colin Mustful is joined by Jodi Harrison, Melissa Makarewicz, and Robin Henry to explore three ways readers and writers can gather, learn, and keep showing up: a free virtual book festival, The Working Writer online community, and the Novel Whisperer Writing Adventure in Santa Fe. Jodi Harrison, program director of the Fort Myers Literary Society, discusses the first History Through Fiction Virtual Book Festival, taking place Saturday, November 14. The free online event is designed to give readers room to meet authors, join conversations about historical fiction, move between panels and discussion groups, and connect through bookstores and book clubs. The conversation also highlights the community read of Jessica McCann’s All Different Kinds of Free and asks how readers can support authors beyond simply buying books. Melissa Makarewicz introduces The Working Writer, an online community for writers balancing creative work with jobs, families, and the rest of life. Weekly writing sprints, monthly goal setting, focused resources, peer feedback, and the simple act of being noticed when you show up all help turn an overwhelming ambition into steady, intentional progress. Robin Henry, managing editor and acquisitions colleague at History Through Fiction and a book coach through Readerly, previews the Novel Whisperer Writing Adventure in Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 6 to 12, 2027. The small-group retreat will combine protected writing time, individual coaching, shared meals, creative fellowship, and space to think deeply about historical fiction projects in progress. Together, these conversations make a larger point: books do not exist in isolation. They live in the relationships among authors, readers, bookstores, writing groups, and literary communities. Explore the Book Festival at historythroughfiction.com/book-festival, learn about The Working Writer, and find details about the Novel Whisperer Writing Adventure. Discover more stories, workshops, events, and resources at historythroughfiction.com.

In this episode of History Through Fiction: The Podcast, host Colin Mustful talks with Vanessa Miller, author of The Ladies Hall, about three Black women—Mary Church Terrell, Anna Julia Cooper, and Ida Gibbs Hunt—who entered Oberlin College expecting its promise of equality to be real. What they encountered was a place where the doors were open, but the hearts were not. Vanessa explains how their experiences became a story about education, belonging, and the unfinished work of equality. The conversation follows Vanessa’s research into Oberlin’s founding as an interracial college, its abolitionist community, and the Oberlin-Wellington rescue of John Price. She shares why she chose Mary’s and Anna’s perspectives, how she gives her characters room to be young, imperfect, and still becoming, and why historical fiction can connect the past’s struggles to today’s conversations about race, access, and DEI. She also reflects on the calling behind her faith-informed writing, her MFA studies, and the ambitious future she envisions for her work. Guest framing (draft based on episode transcript; please confirm): Vanessa Miller is a historical-fiction author and the writer of The Ladies Hall, a novel about Mary Church Terrell, Anna Julia Cooper, and Ida Gibbs Hunt at Oberlin College. In this conversation, she draws on her research, her experience as a writer, and her commitment to inspirational storytelling to bring their early lives and enduring influence into focus. History Through Fiction is a home for readers and writers who believe the past is full of stories worth recovering—and that the best historical fiction can deepen our understanding of the present. Discover more novels, workshops, events, and community at https://www.historythroughfiction.com.

In this episode of History Through Fiction: The Podcast, host Colin Mustful welcomes author Jane D. Cairns to discuss Exalted Objects, her historical novel about nineteenth-century New Hampshire brothers George and Will Stark. What begins with a strange historical discovery—one brother placing the other in McLean Asylum because the family could no longer stop him from buying elephants—opens into a larger story about reputation, freedom, ambition, and the strange ways love survives rivalry. Jane traces how George, a railroad executive and political candidate, and Will, a poet and traveling lecturer, embody competing ways of seeing the world: order and creativity, structure and whimsy. She shares how she moved from journalism and local history into fiction, learned to write the gaps left by the historical record, and drew on research into railroads, steam power, period newspapers, and a Harper’s Weekly illustration. The conversation also explores the collaborative work behind the audiobook, the role of writing communities and the GrubStreet Novel Incubator, and why careful research—even details that never appear on the page—helps historical fiction feel authentic. Jane D. Cairns is a Massachusetts-based writer, journalist, and grassroots local historian, an active member of GrubStreet in Boston and a graduate of its Novel Incubator program. Her work brings together archival curiosity, social and economic history, and a novelist’s attention to the emotional life behind the facts. History Through Fiction is a home for stories that connect the past to the present through historical novels, conversations, workshops, events, and a community of readers and writers. Discover more at https://www.historythroughfiction.com.

In this episode of History Through Fiction: The Podcast, host Colin Mustful speaks with historian and historical novelist Laura Kamoie, co-author of A Founding Mother, about Abigail Adams—the sharp-minded, outspoken woman whose letters reveal the human stakes behind the American Revolution and the creation of a new nation. Together, they explore what Abigail’s life can teach us about voice, independence, and the ongoing work of building a more perfect union. The conversation begins with a scene from 1814, as Abigail hears that Washington has burned and wonders whether the American experiment is collapsing. From there, Laura discusses Abigail’s surprisingly modern voice, her tart humor and intellectual confidence, and the full force of her appeal to “remember the ladies.” The episode looks beyond the familiar quotation to Abigail’s larger arguments about women’s education, political representation, and financial independence—including the entrepreneurial work and careful planning that allowed her to leave money to the women in her life. Laura also reflects on the craft of historical fiction: how close readings of letters and primary sources become dialogue and interior voice, how historical novels can function as a form of public history, and how she and Stephanie Dray collaborate to create a single, unified character on the page. She shares how her work as a historian and teacher informs her fiction, and why Abigail’s insistence that each generation must do its part remains resonant as the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Laura Kamoie brings together a historian’s care with sources, a novelist’s feel for character, and a deep commitment to telling the stories of people who shaped the past from within the pressures of everyday life. Her connection to Abigail Adams is especially compelling because A Founding Mother joins archival research, narrative craft, and the urgent question of how a nation’s ideals are lived—and revised—over time. At History Through Fiction, the past becomes vivid through story, conversation, and the craft of bringing overlooked lives into focus. Explore the catalog of historical novels, workshops, events, and the wider community at https://www.historythroughfiction.com.