IN 2015, when I finished editing A Tyranny of Petticoats: 15 Stories of Belles, Bank Robbers & Other Badass Girls, I knew I wanted to edit another feminist historical fiction anthology. Tyranny was — and continues to be — the best, most joyful, and most satisfying collaborative experience of my career. So I cast about, searching for a theme, and hit upon the idea of girls who were outsiders in their communities. Searching for a potential title, I found a quote by President Rutherford B. Hayes: “Universal suffrage is sound in principle. The radical element is right.”

And so The Radical Element was born, shifting the focus slightly — and I think empoweringly — from girls who were outsiders to girls who were radical in their communities, whether by virtue of their race, religion, sexuality, disability, gender, or the profession they were pursuing.

Merriam-Webster’s definitions of radical include “very different from the usual or traditional” and “excellent, cool.” I like to think our heroines are both. Our radical girls are first- and second-generation immigrants. They are Mormon and Jewish, queer and questioning, wheelchair users and neurodivergent, Iranian-American and Latina and Black and biracial. They are funny and awkward and jealous and brave. They are spies and scholars and sitcom writers, printers’ apprentices and poker players, rockers and high-wire walkers. They are mundane and they are magical. They yearn for an education in Savannah in 1838, struggle with Hollywood racism in 1923, and immigrate to Boston in 1984.

There is power — a quiet badassery — in girls taking charge of their own destinies. Our heroines follow their dreams, whether those dreams are a safe place to practice their faith or an elusive pair of white leather go-go boots. These girls will not allow society to define them. Instead, they define themselves, claiming their identities even though it was often not historically safe — and, disappointingly, is not always currently safe — to do so. They learn to love themselves in all their perfectly imperfect beauty — which, as some of our heroines learn, might be the most radical act of all.

At the Texas Book Festival, a teenage girl in the audience of my panel said she was, with the encouragement of her teacher, trying to read about history from many points of view, not just that of the cisgendered heterosexual white men who have traditionally written it. We panelists applauded. We need empathy now more than ever. We need to read stories about, and especially by, voices that have been traditionally silenced and erased from history. We need curious, open-minded, open-hearted teenagers (and adults!) like you.

I hope you will see yourself reflected in at least one of these stories. I hope they will make you question what traditional history lessons miss and inspire you to seek out more radical girls. Most of all, I hope this collection will provide an impetus for you to be the radical element in your own community, dreaming big, loving yourself fiercely, and writing the next chapter of history.

Thank you for reading.

JESSICA SPOTSWOOD