Julia Cooke’s Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World comes out at the end of this month and I snagged an advance copy. I fell so in love with the book I reached out to Julia to see if I could interview her. The book is about the writing careers and peripatetic lives of Rebecca West, Martha Gellhorn, and Emily “Mickey” Hahn. To call them war correspondents is accurate but incomplete. These women did it all: reportage, memoirs, novels. Anyone even slightly familiar with my site will know my feelings for Rebecca West: the impact she has had on my life is truly massive. Cooke really contextualizes the world of journalism in the 20s and 30s, and how these women decided – separately – to forge out on their own, when very few women were. I love this book, it comes out on February 24, 2026.
Here’s my interview with Julia Cooke about her book Starry and Restless.
