I love Christina Ward. And I love the work she does.
I am lucky enough to know some really brilliant and wonderful women. Christina? She is absolutely top shelf.
As an author, she does outrageously cool writing on food and food history. Canning and food preservation? She’s got you. The relationship between food, cults and class? Read her work. It will blow your mind.
Christina also has another gig: she is one of the primary folks at a publishing company known as Feral House. Around since 1989, FH has certainly courted controversy, being one of the very first publishers to release texts on such taboo subjects as black metal, punk, death culture, conspiracies and cults. But FH does not center itself on shock; it works on examining outsider perspectives and the work that Christina and the team there do is vital to our thorough understanding of the world.
I invite you to listen to my conversation with Christina Ward in which we discuss all these things and more. The books and writing that they platform place them solidly against misogyny, colonialism, capitalism and classism, making them an incredibly valuable publisher in this day and age.
As usual, bio is below the podcast link. Links to various subjects from our conversation are embedded in the bio so be sure to click on those and check’em out!!
Christina Ward is an author, editor, and seeker. She had the distinct pleasure of riding around town in the Wienermobile with Padma Lakshmi on the hottest day in July of 2019 for “Taste the Nation.” Her newest book, Holy Food: Recipes and Foodways from Cults, Communes, and New Religious Movements, will be published in early spring of 2023. Her previous book, American Advertising Cookbooks-How Corporations Taught Us To Love Spam, Bananas, and Jell-O, earned positive notice from Florence Fabricant in the New York Times, Christopher Kimball of Milk Street Radio, and numerous other journalists and readers.
Christina makes regular guest expert on Milwaukee television programs and public radio stations across the United States, delighting in ‘working blue’ before 8 am. She is also the Vice President of Feral House, a publisher noted for their books on outré topics. She contributed to and edited the 2021 book Bawdy Tales & Trifles of Devilries for Ladies and Gentlemen of Experience under her nom d’amour, Lady Fanny Woodcock. She has guided, edited, contributed to, and in a few (unnamed) instances, rewritten, over fifty books.
She has an interest in the lives of forgotten “difficult women” and bringing their stories to readers. Christina regularly contributes to academic and educational conferences on the topic of transgressive art. In her spare time, she is the certified Master Food Preserver for South East Wisconsin and always picks up the phone to answer pressing questions about jelly that won’t set and soft pickles.
Christina’s book on food preservation: Preservation The Art and Science of Canning, Fermentation and Dehydration
Book on Maila Nurmi aka Vampyra!
As mentioned, Four White Horses and a Brass Band – the story of Violet McNeal!!!
Definitely check out Dirty Helen Cromwell in Good Time Party Girl
Great book- You Can’t Win by Jack Black (no, not THAT Jack Black)
As mentioned, Roving Bill Aspinwall
Also- for those punks out there like me who are interested in punk crime lore and thorough about their history…I think this looks interesting and it’s got Raymond Pettibon art… Disco’s Out…Murder’s in!
