This episode of Big Blend Radio's "Books & Authors" series, presented with Books Forward, features author Suzanne Leonard and her new book, A Feminist Guide to Marriage (Goldsmiths Press), out November 10, 2026. Part memoir, part manifesto, and part feminist history, it takes on one of the most personal and most political choices we make, and asks how we can make marriage fairer for everyone in it.

Suzanne is a Professor of Race, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Simmons University in Boston, where she has been teaching for 25 years. She has published widely on sex, romance, marriage, adultery, and intimacy, and is the author of Wife, Inc: The Business of Marriage in the Twenty-First Century.

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A Feminist Guide to Marriage (Goldsmiths Press, November 10, 2026) is part crash course in feminism, part social guide, part memoir, and part manifesto, designed to help readers understand marriage and do it better. Drawing on stories from real people about everything from dating to divorce, Suzanne looks at how marriage touches our bodies, minds, money, families, and friendships.

With chapters on sex, money, children, and monogamy, among others, the book explores how to live your desires ethically, what a just marriage looks like, and what to ask of yourself and of your partner(s). Available in paperback for $19.99 (£17.99).

Suzanne explains the contradiction at the heart of her book: feminists have long critiqued marriage, and some second-wave feminists believed it should be abolished. Her view is that marriage is here to stay, so the question is how to make it more equitable, especially now that same-sex couples have been able to marry for about 11 years.

Why private choices, like keeping her own name, show up at airports, in healthcare, in inheritance, and in banking and tax law, and why one theorist calls marriage the most political thing most people ever do.

Finding a partner who values spending time and money on the same things you do, spending on what makes you irrationally happy, and why couples who share at least one bank account from the start tend to be happier with their finances.

What is driving the tradwife trend, what the 1950s really looked like, and why the work-or-stay-home question leaves out the community around us. We also talk about how much of the appeal is visual nostalgia.

Why being transparent about what you want, without shame, matters in a partnership, and how feminists have been thinking about consensual non-monogamy for a long time.

What we can learn from asking family and friends for introductions, trusting the people who know us best, and bringing a little humility to the question of who we choose.

Suzanne remembers watching Princess Diana's wedding at age eight, and we talk about the gap between the fairy-tale story and what really happens in a marriage, and why more openness is a very feminist idea.

Who does the laundry, why keeping score doesn't serve couples, and why flexibility matters since no one can know what the future holds. Plus a reminder that fixing spark plugs is not a gendered activity.

Thirty years of thinking about marriage, the friends who shared their stories over coffee and long emails, and what writing the book taught Suzanne about herself and her husband.

Why a culture of collaboration beats a culture of competition, one friend's definition of feminism as locating sites of oppression wherever they are found, and Suzanne's hope that feminism can make your life, and the lives around you, better.

Suzanne's closing advice: be honest and a little vulnerable with someone you trust. We also share a few thoughts on amicable divorce and the idea of celebrating a new chapter.

Learn more about Suzanne Leonard and A Feminist Guide to Marriage at SuzanneLeonard.com

Books & Authors is presented with BooksForward.com

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