About the Author

The idea for this blog came to me one night while I was folding laundry. As I lovingly folded the t-shirts that my husband would just as happily leave in a wrinkled heap, I thought about something I had read earlier that day in John Keay's India: A History.  In his chapter on the Sepoy Mutiny, Keay chronicled the adventures of a young woman named Lakshmi Bai who had been an important leader in the rebellion. Despite being a relatively well-informed student of history, I had never heard of Lakshmi Bai. It made me wonder just how many other unsung heroines were out there.

Meanwhile, on the back burner, I had been thinking about blogging. I had tried blogging a couple of times before, but all of my previous attempts had stalled out because I didn't have a sufficiently compelling topic to sustain the blog. Not to knock cooking blogs (because I love them), but I personally lack interest in writing about what I had for breakfast every day. I wanted to blog because I love to write. I was simply struck with the constipation that every writer suffers at some point: I didn't know what to write about.

So, in the unglamorous moment of putting away clean underwear, I experienced a life-changing confluence of these two ideas. Perhaps this was the blog-worthy topic that had eluded me for so long: a chronicle of the lives of significant, but underrepresented women.  I then thought of my favorite scene from classic bro-comedy Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure: 

And thus, Historical Babes was born - when you've got a title that perfect, you've just got to run with it.

Writing this blog has challenged me to learn about historical topics I had previously known little about: something that is both joyfully rewarding and also helpful in my day job as a history teacher. It has challenged me to think about history in ways I never had before: to make connections between the distant past and our current political climate. It has challenged me to write, edit, and publish on a somewhat regular basis - something that helps keep me going while I ride the publication roller coaster for my historical novel about the emigration of Iraqi Jews in the 1950s. When it does get published, there will be histrionics on this blog and all over twitter.

In the meantime, enjoy these historical babes.