John Lennon admitted it himself: he wouldn't give Yoko Ono a co-writing credit on "Imagine" because she was a woman. That's just one of the stories our first guest ever, Jenna Cosgrove, creator of the viral TikTok series Lost Women, dug up while ripping women out of the footnotes and back into history.

Jenna Cosgrove, the Australian screenwriter and TikTok creator behind Lost Women, joins Ksenija and Sue to talk about the women erased from history, from WWII combat nurses who stormed the beaches at D-Day unarmed and were denied veteran status when they came home, to the real story behind who wrote "Imagine." They also get into whether things have actually gotten better, and the new AI-plagiarism witch hunt disproportionately targeting women authors.

📚 Books Mentioned
• And If I Perish: Frontline U.S. Army Nurses in World War II by Evelyn Monahan and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee
• The Women by Kristin Hannah

💌 Our Substack & Show Notes:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 Read Ksenija's Novels:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

📚 Ksenija on Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

🎙 ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKS
Hosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston, Transatlantic Bookmarks is a weekly literary podcast that uses books as the starting point for conversations about culture, history, psychology, morality, politics, and the questions hiding between the lines. New segments every Saturday, Monday, and Thursday.

This is Part 1 of a three-part conversation with Jenna Cosgrove. Part 2 digs into literary erasure, centered on Sanora Babb and Steinbeck. Part 3 covers the manosphere, from Jenna's own experience making feminist-coded content publicly.

👉 CHAPTERS
00:00 Introducing Jenna Cosgrove & the Lost Women Project
01:46 Erasing Female War Veterans
08:18 The Case of Yoko Ono and Britney Spears
11:58 AI Witch Hunt

Did #MeToo go too far—or is that the wrong question?

In this episode of Transatlantic Bookmarks, Ksenija Popovic and Sue discuss Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, a provocative campus novel that asks what happens when allegations of sexual misconduct reshape not only one man’s career, but also the life and reputation of his wife.

The narrator’s husband, a university professor, is accused by former students of inappropriate relationships. She does not publicly condemn him, and students begin to question whether she should still be allowed to teach.

Should a professor lose her job because she remains married to a man accused of misconduct? Are students entitled to feel uncomfortable—or does this become guilt by association?

We talk about the achievements of the #MeToo movement, sexual harassment, power imbalances between professors and students, changing cultural standards, generational differences, safe spaces, public accountability, and the difficulty of judging past behaviour by today’s moral framework.

This is not an argument against #MeToo. It is a conversation about nuance: where accountability belongs, how cultural change happens, and whether movements lose public support when every difficult question is treated as moral failure.

Where do you draw the line between accountability and guilt by association? Tell us in the comments.

📚 BOOKS MENTIONED:
(As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases)

• Vladimir by Julia May Jonas: https://amzn.to/4goD9f6

💌 OUR SUBSTACK AND SHOW NOTES:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 READ KSENIJA’S NOVELS:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

📚 KSENIJA ON GOODREADS:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

🎙️ ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKS
Hosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston, Transatlantic Bookmarks is a weekly literary podcast that uses books as the starting point for conversations about culture, history, psychology, morality, politics, and the questions hiding between the lines.

New segments every Saturday, Monday, and Thursday.

👉🏻 CHAPTERS

00:00 Did Me Too Go Too Far?
04:16 The Issue with Wokeness
05:40 The Trap of Judging the Past from Today's Perspective
10:57 Challenging the Mainstream Narrative

Do open marriages actually work, or do they sometimes become a story one partner tells themselves in order to stay?

In this episode of Transatlantic Bookmarks, Ksenija and Sue use Vladimir by Julia May Jonas to debate open marriage, monogamy, infidelity, and the uneasy line between genuine freedom and unequal compromise.

The marriage at the center of Vladimir is technically open: both partners have had affairs. But when the husband’s relationships with students become public, the question becomes more complicated. Did both people freely choose the arrangement, or did one partner set the rules while the other learned to live with them?

We discuss why people marry in the first place, whether monogamy is natural or cultural, the practical and emotional reasons couples remain together, power imbalances in relationships, children and extended family, and the very different ways marriage functions in Montenegro and the United States.

Would you ever choose an open marriage? And can it work only when both partners truly want it? Tell us in the comments.

📚 BOOKS MENTIONED:
(As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases)

• Vladimir by Julia May Jonas: https://amzn.to/4goD9f6

💌 OUR SUBSTACK AND SHOW NOTES:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/

📚 READ KSENIJA’S NOVELS:
https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications

📚 KSENIJA ON GOODREADS:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_

🎙️ ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKS
Hosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston, Transatlantic Bookmarks is a weekly literary podcast that uses books as the starting point for conversations about culture, history, psychology, morality, politics, and the questions hiding between the lines.

New segments every Saturday, Monday, and Thursday.

👉🏻 CHAPTERS
00:00 Open Marriages
06:09 Cultural Perspectives on Marriage
10:17 The Practicalities of Marriage

#LiteraryFiction #ContemporaryFiction #BookTube #LiteraryPodcast #TransatlanticBookmarks