Uploaded December 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Join host and Johns Hopkins University lecturer Sue Eisenfeld for a conversation with author Vicki Valosik on her new book, Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water, and her path to becoming a published author.
Swimming Pretty—which Publisher's Weekly described as "an incisive marriage of sports and cultural history"—traces a century of aquatic performance, from vaudeville to the Olympic arena, and brings to life the colorful cast of characters whose “pretty swimming” not only laid the groundwork for the sport of synchronized swimming but forever changed women’s relationships with water. Far more than bathing beauties, these swimming starlets ushered in sensible swimwear and influenced lifesaving and physical education programs, helping to decrease national drowning rates and paving the way for new generations of female athletes.
Vicki Valosik is a writer, a masters synchronized swimmer, and an editorial director and writing instructor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Her book Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water was published by Liveright Publishing, an imprint at W.W. Norton, in June 2024. Valosik's writing has appeared in national publications, such as The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, Slate, American Scholar, U.S. News & World Report, Huffington Post, Washington Post Magazine, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She holds an MA in Nonfiction Writing from Johns Hopkins University and an MA in Sociology from the University of South Alabama.
Interested in writing? Explore the JHU MA in Science Writing and MA in Writing programs:
https://advanced.jhu.edu/academics/graduate/ma-science-writing/
https://advanced.jhu.edu/academics/graduate/ma-writing/
Join host and Johns Hopkins University lecturer Sue Eisenfeld for a conversation with author Vicki Valosik on her new book, Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water, and her path to becoming a published author.
Swimming Pretty—which Publisher's Weekly described as "an incisive marriage of sports and cultural history"—traces a century of aquatic performance, from vaudeville to the Olympic arena, and brings to life the colorful cast of characters whose “pretty swimming” not only laid the groundwork for the sport of synchronized swimming but forever changed women’s relationships with water. Far more than bathing beauties, these swimming starlets ushered in sensible swimwear and influenced lifesaving and physical education programs, helping to decrease national drowning rates and paving the way for new generations of female athletes.
Vicki Valosik is a writer, a masters synchronized swimmer, and an editorial director and writing instructor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Her book Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water was published by Liveright Publishing, an imprint at W.W. Norton, in June 2024. Valosik's writing has appeared in national publications, such as The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, Slate, American Scholar, U.S. News & World Report, Huffington Post, Washington Post Magazine, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. She holds an MA in Nonfiction Writing from Johns Hopkins University and an MA in Sociology from the University of South Alabama.
Interested in writing? Explore the JHU MA in Science Writing and MA in Writing programs:
https://advanced.jhu.edu/academics/graduate/ma-science-writing/
https://advanced.jhu.edu/academics/graduate/ma-writing/
