Book Launch: A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls by Adam Morgan

Join us as we celebrate the launch of A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature by Adam Morgan. For this event, Adam will be in conversation with Julia Fine.

The life and times of literary pioneer and queer icon Margaret C. Anderson, who risked everything to be the first to publish James Joyce’s Ulysses in America. Perfect for fans of The Editor, Flapper, and Nasty Women.

Already under fire for publishing the literary avant-garde into a world not ready for it, Margaret C. Anderson’s cutting-edge magazine The Little Review was a bastion of progressive politics and boundary-pushing writing from then-unknowns like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Butler Yeats, and Djuna Barnes. And as its publisher, Anderson was a target. From Chicago to New York and Paris, this fearless agitator helmed a woman-led publication that pushed American culture forward and challenged the sensibilities of early 20th century Americans dismayed by its salacious writing and advocacy for supposed extremism like women’s suffrage, access to birth control, and LBGTQ rights.

But then it went too far. In 1921, Anderson found herself on trial and labeled “a danger to the minds of young girls” by a government seeking to shut her down. Guilty of having serialized James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses in her magazine, Anderson was now not just a publisher but also a scapegoat for regressives seeking to impose their will on a world on the brink of modernization.

Author, journalist, and literary critic Adam Morgan brings Anderson and her journal to life anew in A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls, capturing a moment of cultural acceleration and backlash all too familiar today while shining light on an unsung heroine of American arts and letters. Bringing a fresh eye to a woman and a movement misunderstood in their time, this biography highlights a feminist counterculture that audaciously pushed for more during a time of extreme social conservatism and changed the face of American literature and culture forever.

Adam Morgan is a culture journalist and critic who lives near Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His writing regularly appears in Esquire, and has also been published in The Paris Review, Scientific American, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and more. He spent a decade in Chicago, during which time he founded the Chicago Review of Books and covered the city’s arts and culture for Chicago magazine and the Chicago Reader.

Julia Fine is the author of the novels Maddalena and the Dark, The Upstairs House, winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, and What Should Be Wild, which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior First Novel. Her latest novel, published as Margaux Eliot, is Honeymoon Stage. She teaches writing in Chicago, where she lives with her family.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are strongly encouraged. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com by no later than 14 days before the event. For scholarship tickets or other access needs please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com.