Claim OwnershipLand of Laura: the Podcast
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Land of Laura is the irreverent yet scholarly podcast about all things Laura Ingalls Wilder. The podcast offers Little House and Laura Ingalls Wilder fans insight from authors, historians, researchers, museum professionals — anyone who has something to contribute to the Laura Ingalls Wilder world. It's a podcast for people who love the Little House books — or are even just interested in them. Every episode brings a new take on something in the Little House world.
26 Episodes
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This week Land of Laura is thrilled to talk with @LauraIngallsGunn. In the past few years, the interior designer has found herself increasingly seated behind her sewing machine. She has been recreating clothing based on descriptions found on the pages of the Little House® books as well as from the Little House on the Prairie television series. Her lovingly handcrafted garments have been displayed at Little House celebrations and museums all over the country. @LauraIngallsGunn has a forthcoming book, WHAT LAURA WORE: Fashions Inspired By The Little House Books, that shares clothing Laura Ingalls Wilder, her family, and other Victorian contemporaries might have made, wore, and cherished.
Let the Hurricane Roar ... Missouri Ruralist ... the Rock House ... LauraPalooza ... Holtz ... homesite ... Burr Oak ... what is the significance of all these terms in the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder?If you've ever wondered what we're referring to sometimes when we're talking on the podcast, we're here to help. Presenting Laura Ingalls Wilder 101.
Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2018. Before writing Prairie Fires, author Caroline Fraser was selected to edit the Library of America's official two-volume set of the Little House® books. Back in the early 90s, her extensive review of William Holtz's Ghost in the Little House was featured in the New York Review of Books. Her latest book, Murderland, looks at environmental links between serial killers and polluted areas of the Pacific Northwest. Today she joins Land of Laura to talk to us about all of it.https://www.carolinefraser.net/
Scholars have wondered for years about what happened to Rose Wilder Lane's "lost" Armenian book. Thanks to historian and author Ginger Pedersen, now they know.Dr. Mabel Elliott worked tirelessly in early-1920s Europe to help thousands of Armenian women and orphans in the aftermath of the horrific Armenian genocide. She subsequently wrote a book about that work. A hundred years later, Ginger Pederson was in the thick of research for her biography on Dr. Elliott, Unbreakable Healer, when she learned that Dr. Elliott's book, Beginning Again at Ararat, had an uncredited collaborator. That collaborator? Rose Wilder Lane. On this week's Land of Laura, Ginger Pedersen tells her story of solving this literary mystery along with Rose Wilder Lane scholar Sallie Ketcham.===================YouTube explainer about Children of AraratChildren of AraratUnbreakable Healer===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================Laura Ingalls WilderLittle House on the PrairieRose Wilder LaneChildren of AraratArmenian GenocideGinger PedersenSallie KetchamMabel Elliott
What is a peplum — and could you have worn one in the 1980s? How many undergarments might a woman wear in the nineteenth century? What kind of a dress was Ma's delaine? How fashionable was Caroline Ingalls? Does the dress she wore in Little House in the Big Woods show up in other books in the Little House® series? Answers to these questions and more in tomorrow's episode of Land of Laura, when historic interpreter Laura Keyes (from Historic Voices) returns as promised to talk about Ma's delaine dress, as well as providing a detailed primer on pioneer ladies' underwear.===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================
Who's planning a trip to Pepin? One of the many homesites Laura Ingalls Wilder fans can visit is Laura's birthplace of Pepin, Wisconsin, a charming artistic town on the Great River Road on the Minnesota border. Kitty Latané is a longtime Pepin resident who has been deeply involved with the village of Pepin and Laura Ingalls Wilder's connection there for decades. She even wrote the foreword for the Land of Laura travel guide to Pepin. We're thrilled to have Kitty as this week's podcast guest to talk about her hometown, her role in Pepin's annual Laura Ingalls Wilder Days, and the newest event in Pepin, Home at Laura's Place. ===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================Pepin, Wisconsin: lauraingallspepin.comLaura Ingalls Wilder Days: lauradays.orgInstagram for T&C Latané: tandclataneLand of Laura Pepin Travel Guide on Amazon
Dr. Beth Tarini was a medical school student when talk turned to scarlet fever. Scarlet fever — that's what made Mary Ingalls go blind, she thought. But her medical training had already taught her that wasn't possible. She started to wonder — what did cause Mary's blindness? As she became a doctor, the question stayed in her mind.It would take another decade, but in 2012, working with research assistant Sarah Allexan — today a physician — they came up with an answer to that question that was so plausible, they co-wrote an article about it that was published in the medical journal Pediatrics in 2013. Episode 20 of Land of Laura welcomes guests Dr. Beth Tarini and Dr. Sarah Allexan to look back on that article, their collaboration on it, and the historical and medical research that led to their conclusion on what exactly may have caused Mary Ingalls to go blind.Pediatrics: Blindness in Walnut Grove: How Did Mary Ingalls Lose Her Sight?https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/131/3/404/31000/Blindness-in-Walnut-Grove-How-Did-Mary-Ingalls?redirectedFrom=fulltext===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================Little House seriesLittle House on the PrairieLaura Ingalls WilderRose Wilder Lanescarlet feverMary Ingalls blind
Some of us are scholars, some of us are creative, and some of us are both. Julia Park Tracey, Writer incorporated her Laura Ingalls Wilder scholarship into her latest book, the adult novel WHOA, NELLY: A LOVE STORY WITH FOOTNOTES. What happens when an introverted librarian boards a train in California to meet up with like-minded fans in De Smet, South Dakota? On episode 19 author, journalist, and poet Julia Park Tracey tells us what we can expect.Whoa, Nelly! A Love Story with Footnotes===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================Find Julia on social media:Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/juliaparktraceywriterInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliaparktracey/Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@juliaparktraceyThreads: https://www.threads.com/@juliaparktraceyBlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/juliaparktracey.bsky.social
When author Sarah Miller heard the Little House audiobooks as an adult, she began to see Caroline Ingalls in a different way. In 2018 she published CAROLINE, a look at Laura Ingalls Wilder's book LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE from the perspective of the woman who held it all together: her mother, Caroline Ingalls.http://www.sarahmillerbooks.com/===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================
Wendy McClure, author of The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie (Episode 6), brings her 30 years of experience in children's publishing to another visit to the Land of Laura studio. In an overview over two episodes, she'll orient us to the state of quality children's literature when Laura Ingalls Wilder (and Rose Wilder Lane) came on the scene. (Hint: it didn't exactly exist.) She'll also introduce us to all four of Laura's editors, including badass Ursula Nordstrom. She'll tell us about the ongoing branding and expansion of the Little House series that started in the 1990s and share her opinion on which Little House book is most likely to show up as a horror movie.===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================
Wendy McClure, author of The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie (Episode 6), brings her 30 years of experience in children's publishing to another visit to the Land of Laura studio. In an overview over two thirty-minute episodes, she'll orient us to the state of quality children's literature when Laura Ingalls Wilder (and Rose Wilder Lane) came on the scene. (Hint: it didn't exactly exist.) She'll also introduce us to all four of Laura's editors, including badass Ursula Nordstrom. She'll tell us about the ongoing branding and expansion of the Little House series that started in the 1990s and share her opinion on which Little House book is most likely to show up as a horror movie.===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================
For over fifty years, readers of Laura Ingalls Wilder's The First Four Years have found the book ... confusing. Why doesn't it sound like the other Little House books? Does it belong with the rest of the series? Why wasn't it published in Wilder's lifetime? Welcome to part 2 of our interview with Pamela Smith Hill about her book Too Good to Be Altogether Lost: Rediscovering Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Books. This episode is all about when, and why, The First Four Years might have been written. ===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================
With the massive project of editing and annotating the unpublished memoir Pioneer Girl behind her, Pamela Smith Hill thought she was done writing about Laura Ingalls Wilder. Alas, she was not. Last year she released Too Good to Be Altogether Lost: Rediscovering Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Books. The title came directly from the speech Wilder herself gave at the Detroit book Fair in 1937, which we told you all about back in Episode 10. In today’s episode, Pamela talks to Land of Laura about what prompted her to write the book, racism on the prairie, and the enduring legacy of the Little House books as classic American literature.===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================
What exactly is girls’ literature? What do we learn about Laura Ingalls Wilder when we study her work critically? What problems are inherent in being protective of "my" Laura?And what if there's more than one Laura? Today's guest, Dawn Sardella-Ayres, Ph.D, is a scholar in girls' literature who has written extensively about Louisa May Alcott, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and Laura Ingalls Wilder. She was a contributor to the 2019 essay collection Reconsidering Laura Ingalls Wilder: Little House and Beyond. For the past few years she’s been teaching virtual girls' literature classes through the Newberry Library in Chicago. Her next class on Laura Ingalls Wilder starts in March 2026. ===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================Girls Lit Reading Group (https://hollinsgirlslit.wordpress.com/)
Dr. Kelly Ferguson has been entertaining Laura fans since 2011 with her hilarious book MY LIFE AS LAURA: HOW I SEARCHED FOR LAURA INGALLS WILDER AND FOUND MYSELF. But writing about Laura had a way of breaking her heart, and fifteen years later, she's embraced a new affinity for Rose Wilder Lane. Kelly's substack, Albaniac, details her own travels to Rose's onetime home and shares interviews with the top minds in Rose Wilder Lane scholarship. Today, Land of Laura talks to Kelly about the book, her heartbreak with Laura, and finding her way to Albania. ===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================
At its core, the Land of Laura podcast is about celebrating the people in world of Laura Ingalls Wilder: the researchers, the museum professionals, the historians, the academics, the fans ... all of us. But what exactly is it about Laura Ingalls Wilder that brings us all together when we're all so different? New York City–based filmmaker Amy Elliott asked herself that questions, and decided she wanted to answer it in film. She's just finishing up filming for Girls Gone Wilder, a documentary that explores the culture of Laura Ingalls Wilder fandom. We're so excited to have her as this week's guest in the Land of Laura studio. ===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================
In 1937, when she was 70 years old, Laura Ingalls Wilder traveled to Detroit to deliver a speech that would forever after be known as her "Detroit Book Fair Speech." What was the Detroit Book Fair? What was in her speech? Why is this speech considered so integral to her career? Eddie Higgins returns to the podcast with answers to all of this and more. Then, eavesdrop on our field trip to the Detroit Public Library, home of one of the most robust collections of Laura Ingalls Wilder artifacts.===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================
Chris Czajka's day job is with WNET in New York City, and in 2020 he developed and produced Laura Ingalls Wilder: Prairie to Page as part of PBS's American Masters series. But that's only a smidge of his Little House involvement. Tune in to find out all of the ways Little House — both the book series and the TV show — has found its way into his life.===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================
It's a special Thanksgiving episode with the origin story of Pamela Smith Hill, a longtime literary fixture in the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Hill's biography Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer's Life was published in 2007 by the South Dakota Historical Society Press. She went on to act as editor and annotator of Pioneer Girl, Wilder's previously unpublished memoir that became an unexpected national bestseller in 2014, also with SDHS Press. Her latest book is Too Good to Be Altogether Lost: Rediscovering Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House Books, published in July 2025 by University of Nebraska Press. ===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================
Cindy Wilson couldn’t get the question out of her head: Was the Long Winter really as bad as Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote in her book? Answering that question—from trains to food to fuel—resulted in a book, The Beautiful Snow. Cindy visits the podcast to tell us all about it.===================Theme music is "Roll the Old Chariot Along" from the album Green Willow by the Dreadnaughts. Used with permission.====================
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Great podcast! I so look forward to new episodes every week.
I loved this so much! Looking forward to more episodes with William Anderson.