In honor of Inter­na­tional Women’s Day, I am excited to wel­come Eliz­a­beth Wein, author of Code Name Ver­ity, (my review of which can be read here) to Turn the Page. Eliz­a­beth very gen­er­ously agreed to an in-depth inter­view about her new book and a guest post about flygirls!

Fly­girls

One of the things that I set out very con­sciously to do in writ­ing Code Name Ver­ity was to give my hero­ines impor­tant work that they were capa­ble of doing.  I feel that we all need a nudg­ing reminder that many women still don’t get taken seri­ously in jobs that are tra­di­tion­ally asso­ci­ated with men, and that we need to con­tin­u­ally expand our horizons.

I get so mad when peo­ple assume that you can’t be inter­ested in fly­ing just because you’re a girl.  At my first fly­ing club Christ­mas party, after I’d started tak­ing lessons, when I intro­duced myself to another woman at the party the first thing she asked was, ‘And whose wife are you?’ —As though I couldn’t pos­si­bly be there on my own.  The free­dom of the sky, and the sense of accom­plish­ment in know­ing how to land a plane myself, are the most hard-won prizes I have ever earned.  They shouldn’t be denied to anybody.

Amaz­ingly, because it seems to be a coin­ci­dence that 8 March is Inter­na­tional Women’s Day and that the first ‘national’ Women’s Day was cel­e­brated in 1910, 8 March 1910 hap­pens to be the day that Ray­monde de Laroche of France became the world’s first female licensed pilot.