From the Plains to Paris: Literary Community, Female Journalists, and the Exploits of Midwesterners Abroad presented by Theodore Wheeler

This program focuses on the historical figures who serve as the backbone of Wheeler’s latest novel, The War Begins in Paris, what drew him to write about that era, and the connection between his literary community activism in Nebraska and that era’s journalists. The novel is informed by years of research into the experience of journalists during World War II and was instigated by Wheeler’s discovery of the story of Jane Anderson. Jane was an Atlanta debutante who became a pioneering female war correspondent in her early twenties as she reported from trenches, biplanes, and submarines during the First World War. However, Jane Anderson is not famous because she was a contemporary of trailblazers like Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson—Jane Anderson is now mostly known as one of the “Radio Traitors,” a group of American journalists who broadcast propaganda into the United States on behalf of the Nazi regime.

Theodore Wheeler is the bestselling author of three novels, most recently the USA Today bestseller The War Begins in Paris (Little Brown, Nov 14, 2023). His other novels include Kings of Broken Things (Little A, 2017), an Amazon bestseller, and In Our Other Lives (Little A, 2020), both of which are set on the Great Plains. He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Nebraska Arts Council, and Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. For fourteen years Theodore worked as a journalist who covered law and politics, and he now teaches creative writing in the English Department at Creighton University.

This program is sponsored by Humanities Nebraska. We appreciate their support!