Special Guest Megan Abbott // Sarahfest Bonus Episode

Welcome to a special Sarahfest bonus episode of Swerve South! This week, Theresa is joined by novelist, television writer, and showrunner Megan Abbott to discuss their shared pop cultural obsession: coming-of-age stories. Theresa and Megan dive into the subversive coming-of-age touchstones of their own adolescence and interrogate why, even as adults, they keep returning to complicated narratives of girlhood and growing up. This leads into a fascinating conversation about the 1969 film The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and the particular allure of the mentor-protégé subset of the coming-of-age genre. Set at a Scottish girls’ school in the 1930s, the film follows four young students who fall under the thrall of their glamorous (and dangerous) teacher Miss Jean Brodie, played by Maggie Smith. From thorny student-teacher relationships to a slippery romance with fascism, Theresa and Megan explore this thought-provoking film.