First, heartfelt thanks to New Ohio Review editor Dave Wanczyk and editorial assistant Jenna Brown for championing my essay, “The Journey and Return of Elizabeth Fisher,” and giving it a home on their online Winter 2025 edition, where I hope many will find it. My deepest desire in writing this essay is to restore Elizabeth Fisher to the narrative we have of Ursula K. Le Guin’s inspiring and wry essay on narrative form and structure, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.” I hope my essay adds context and nuance to Le Guin’s essay and sparks new conversations among writers. Most of all, my goal (which became an obsession, I admit) was to find Elizabeth, to bring her back to life through her writing and the memories of those who knew and loved her, and to honor a forgotten writer who might have felt her work was in vain.
To further appreciate the connection between Elizabeth Fisher and Ursula Le Guin, please visit David Naimon, host of Between the Covers, a literary radio show and podcast brought to us by Tin House. Here you’ll find David’s remarkable podcast series “Crafting with Ursula” and his conversations with writers who discuss Le Guin’s writing and her writing life. David’s illuminating and delightful conversation with Lidia Yuknavitch is all about “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.”
The image below is a screenshot from the MacDowell website: www.macdowell.org. Photo by Bernice B. Perry. Used with permission from the Milford Historical Society, New Hampshire. By the way, Bernice Blake Perry (March 2, 1905 – July 10, 1996) was an American pilot and photographer and the first woman to earn a pilot’s license in New Hampshire.
“A Natural Feminist: The Trees and Fields Went Another Way.” By Elizabeth FIsher, July 4, 1974 for the New York Times (about Evelyn Eaton) https://www.nytimes.com/1974/04/07/archives/the-trees-and-fields-went-the-other-way-elizabeth-fisher-is-a.html
“The Second Sex Junior Division.” By Elizabeth Fisher, May 24, 1970 for the New Y.ork Times
Issues of APHRA can be found on JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/site/reveal-digital/independent-voices/aphra-27953329/?so=item_title_str_asc
A review of Elizabeth Fisher’s book, Woman’s Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society (McGraw-Hill, 1979) by Alice S. Rossi, August 19, 1979 for the New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/19/archives/without-the-male-prism-female.html
DOLORES DEANE WALKER’s editorial letter to the New York Times about Elizabeth Fisher’s book being ignored: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/11/books/l-women-in-evolution-045885.html
A review of Elizabeth Fisher’s book, Woman’s Creation: Sexual Evolution and the Shaping of Society (McGraw-Hill, 1979), in American Anthropologist by Jane B. Lancaster, University of Oklahoma, in 1982. https://www.academia.edu/55676266/Womans_Creation_Sexual_Evolution_and_the_Shaping_of_Society_Elizabeth_Fisher
Here is a photograph of the eulogy Alix Kates Shulman wrote and delivered at Fisher’s memorial service. The eulogy was published in New Directions for Women. I could not find the eulogy online. This is a photograph of Shulman’s copy.
