026 - Sherry L. Smith, Bohemians West

Writing Westward Podcast

A conversation with Sherry L. Smith about her book Bohemians West: Free Love, Family, and Radicals in Twentieth-Century America (Hey Day Books, 2020). Explore more at www.sherrylsmith.com.

Sherry L. Smith is University Distinguished Professor of History (Emerita) at Southern Methodist University. In Bohemians West: Free Love, Family, and Radicals in Twentieth-Century America (Hey Day Books, 2020), Smith tells the story of the interwined lives of Sara Bard Field and Erskine Scott Wood, who were married to others when they met in 1910 in Portland, but negotiated and built a life together on the philosophy of free love, mutual respect for one another, and shared passions for poetry and politics. Smith is a master historian and grounds Bohemians West in expert research, but she gracefully narrates a story with such literary grace that readers might forget the rigorous methodology hiding beneath the surface. Thus, general readers will be captivated by an engaging narrative of intimately details lives, and historians will rejoice in finding a carefully-researched told with such literary flare.

Explore more of Smith's work at www.sherrylsmith.com. Some is also author or editor of the following titles:

• Sagebrush Soldier: Private William Earl Smith's View of the Sioux War of 1876 (University of Oklahoma Press, 1989)
  
• The View from Officer's Row: Army Perceptions of Western Indians (University of Arizona Press, 1990)
• Reimagining Indians: Native Americans through Anglo Eyes, 1880-1940 (Oxford University Press, 2000)
• The Future of the Souther Plains (University of Oklahoma Press, 2003)
• Indians and Energy: Exploitation and Opportunity in the American Southwest (School for Advanced Research Press, 2010)
• Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power (Oxford University Press, 2014)

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Podcast Notes:

• Host and Producer Brenden W. Rensink is Associate Director of the Redd Center, an Associate Professor of History at BYU, General Editor of the Intermountain Histories project, and author of the 2018 book Native but Foreign: Indigenous Immigrants and Refugees in the North American Borderlands. Links to other publications and projects here: https://linktr.ee/bwrensink
• Support provided by the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University.
  
• Podcast Music was written and recorded by local Provo composer by Micah Dahl Anderson.
• Episodes are recorded via Skype or in person and amateurishly engineered and produced by Professor Rensink.
• To submit a book to be considered for a podcast episode, email [email protected].