Women Writing Musicals

The first-ever book to tell the stories of the hundreds of inspiring women who wrote Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals

A supplemental PDF is included with the audio.

There were the women who pounded the pavement selling their songs in Tin Pan Alley at the turn of the twentieth century, to the women who broke new ground writing shows during the Great Depression, to the women who penned protest musicals fighting for social justice during the 1970s, to those who are revitalizing the landscape of American musicals today. Women Writing Musicals is the first-ever book to tell the story of the legacy that our history books left out.

Author Jennifer Ashley Tepper offers here the definitive audiobook on the topic, covering prolific and celebrated writers in the theater canon, like Betty Comden and Jeanine Tesori, to women who wrote musicals but gained fame elsewhere, like Dolly Parton and Sara Bareilles, and names you have never heard of—but definitely should have. Among the gems shared here:

The story of Clara Driscoll, who saved the Alamo and also wrote a Broadway musical

The first all-female writing team for a musical—in 1924

The career of Micki Grant who, in 1972, became the first Black woman to write the book, music, and lyrics for the musical Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope, which became a giant hit