Ourshelves (Virago Books)

In this episode of the Virago podcast editor Ailah Ahmed talks to Lennie Goodings about her book A Bite of the Apple - part memoir, part history of Virago Press and part thoughts on more than forty years of feminist publishing.

Tune-in for Lennie Goodings, stay for the stories about Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood and a life in publishing.

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This month we spoke to Clare Clark, author of In the Full Light of the Sun, a gripping tale is about beauty and justice, and the truth that may be found when our most treasured beliefs are revealed as illusions.

Clare Clark is the author of five highly acclaimed historical novels, including The Great Stink, Savage Lands (both longlisted for the Orange Prize) and The Nature of Monsters. Born in 1967, she graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge with a double first in History, and now lives in London with her husband and two children.

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How can you create your own world when this one doesn’t serve you?

Join as we radically restructure myths, stories and genres – from the American West to fairy tales and nineties pop icons. C. Pam Zhang is author of How Much of These Hills is Gold, longlisted for the Man Booker and Rathbones Folio Prizes and one of Barack Obama’s books of the year. She talks to Lucy Scholes about defiantly imagining herself into erased histories of Asian Americans, sexy feminists and how eavesdropping inspires her writing.

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How do you overcome criticism?

In this episode of OurShelves Lucy Scholes interviews Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend and What Are You Going Through. Lucy and Sigrid discuss the music of Odetta, the comfort of creatures, and Sigrid's friendship with Elizabeth Hardwick.

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Can solitude be a source of inspiration?

In this bonus episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson talks to Lucy Scholes about her latest novel, Jack and its place in the Gilead quartet. Exploring the idea of solitude, Marilynne speaks with characteristic insight about living with her characters as she writes and the absence they leave behind.

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How can we write a life unexpected?

Author of seventeen novels, fourteen plays, theatre-maker, co-director of Fun Palaces and Stonewall writer of the year Stella Duffy OBE is an inspiration of hard-won wisdom and appetite for learning new things. She joins Lucy Scholes for a conversation about living without children in a pro-natalist society, how existentialism and yoga inform her writing and the time she met Patricia Highsmith - as well as why Bridgerton is brilliant.

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How can you be a strong woman in a world that’s not built for you?

Justine Cowan is an attorney used to fighting environmental cases against huge corporations but writing about her mother’s childhood in her first book, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames led her to uncover a very different injustice. She joins Lucy Scholes to talk about finding mother figures in chosen families, rewriting history from new perspectives and how, as a female lawyer in the American South, she overcame barriers by taking courage from her heroes.

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How can we find light in the dark?

Oceanographer, marine biologist and author of Below the Edge of Darkness, Edie Widder’s life has been as fascinating as the animals she studies, and she speaks with irresistible wonderment about watching them communicate with bioluminescence in the depths of the sea. Join her conversation with Lucy Scholes on squirting squids, being the only woman on the ship and overcoming sexism in science with the example of her extraordinary mother.

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Lara Thompson won the first Virago/The Pool New Crime Writer Award for her novel One Night, New York in 2017.

This is the first episode of a series following Lara through the process of publication - from her writing life before winning the prize (featuring jealousy-inducing stories of a "Writing Shed"), to discovering she won the prize whilst eating in a Vietnamese restaurant and her experience and journey towards becoming a published author.

[Please note there is some background noise at one point in the episode due to building work happening outside!]

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Join us as we celebrate LGBTQ+ History Month!

This month Virago editor, Rose Tomaszewska, is joined by Eleanor Crewes, author of The Times I Knew I Was Gay. Tune in for a wonderful discussion around their favourite books by queer authors or that deal with queer themes, including Daphne du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, Sarah Waters and more...

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What does friendship mean to you?

In this episode of OurShelves Lucy Scholes interviews Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, creators of the hit podcast; Call Your Girlfriend. In this episode Lucy, Ann and Aminatou talk about fighting for a radically different future, the comfort of being read to and the sex scenes in Normal People.

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Deborah Frances-White is the creator and host of the hit podcast The Guilty Feminist. She is a stand-up comedian best known for her BBC Radio 4 show Deborah Frances-White Rolls the Dice which won the Writers' Guild Award for Best Radio Comedy. Her book, The Guilty Feminist, was a Sunday Times bestseller and described by Emma Thompson as 'essential reading for the planet'.

We spoke with Deborah just after the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the US Supreme Court, about traversing the boundaries of comedy and politics, and why comedy is so important to feminism.

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Do you have the courage to try again?

In this episode of OurShelves Lucy Scholes chats to Irenosen Okojie, author of Butterfly Fish; Speak Gigantular, Nudibranch and contributor to the short story collection Hag, about the wonder and power of short stories, finding joy in activism and literary legend Toni Morrison.

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How can reading rewire your brain?

After a childhood spent calling Henry James her ‘dude’ and Evelyn Waugh her ‘friend’ R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries, talks to Lucy Scholes about how determinedly reading more people of colour and queer voices helps reconfigure her internal world to match her external world – where straight is not the default. Join her conversation with Lucy Scholes as they break down the myth of the selfish male artist and figure out how to talk about her latest book Kink, a collection of erotic short stories, with religious Asian parents.

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Virago's Lennie Goodings spoke to Susan Fletcher about her beautiful new novel, House of Glass and we hear Susan read a passage from the novel.

As Tracy Chevalier has said, House of Glass starts 'as a ghost story but turns into something much more profound: a lyrical examination of how women carve lives out of a male-dominated society, even with a war looming that will change everyone.'

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What do monsters do for us? 

Join Lucy Scholes for a powerful conversation with Riva Lehrer, artist, activist and author of Golem Girl, her beautifully illustrated memoir about living with disability. From the history of freak shows to the power – and limits - of politicisation, they confront the way monsters violate boundaries and give us permission to live differently.

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Is writing a muscle? 

Kamila Shamsie, prize winning novelist, fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Granta Best of Young British author, talks to Lucy Scholes about her great-aunt, Attia Hosain, whose books are newly reissued with her introductions on the Virago Modern Classics list, and how she once took her aside to say, ‘Never stop writing’. In their conversation, they traverse the psychological journey of refugees, remember how reading Woolf for the first time felt like coming up for air and ask how much courage it takes to write.

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How do we get through the difficult days?

Susie Boyt, author and theatre director, got through the pandemic by walking for miles listening to poetry podcasts to replace the conversations she’d have with friends about books. Here, she tells Lucy Scholes how she had a feminist awakening watching a play where women honoured the horror their friend went through; the sheer joy between grandmother and granddaughter in her latest novel Loved and Missed; and why Judy Garland is her ultimate heroine.

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How do you say ‘Me Too’ in Chinese – when it’s banned on social media?

吕频 Lü Pin, Chinese feminist activist featured in Awakening by Rachel Vogelstein and Meighan Stone, talks to Lucy Scholes about her work challenging gender-based violence in a state without freedom of speech or protest. Through ingenuity, humour and sheer determination, she says, because ‘nobody’ – not even the Chinese government – ‘can control everything’. She remembers the first time she read something which taught her to be proud of being a woman; champions the pop star singing about domestic violence in China; and argues for the importance of anger in fighting her cause.

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Donna Coonan is Editorial Director of the Virago Modern Classics list, which was set up 1978 to demonstrate the existence of a necessary canon of women’s writing and to challenge the sometimes narrow definition of what a ‘classic’ is. Since 2005, she has brought over 200 new books including those by Muriel Spark, Barbara Pym and Patricia Highsmith to this beloved list with its iconic green spines.

Join Lucy Scholes as she fangirls with Donna about the VMCs and find out how she does the detective work of a classics editor; how Virago reassessed the legacy of Daphne du Maurier, championing her as a vital 20th century author when she’d been dismissed as a writer of romances; how Valley of the Dolls challenges the definition of a classic; and how she’s bringing prescient, ground-breaking Black American authors like Gayl Jones, Ann Petry and Gloria Naylor back into print.

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Backstage with Eileen Atkins

How does the writing we love create the roles we perform?

Join Dame Eileen Atkins, stage and TV star, three-time Olivier Award winner and screenwriter of ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ and ‘Mrs Dalloway’ talk about her autobiography, Will She Do? She tells Lucy Scholes how she created the first entertainment about servants inspired by her parents’ lives, how a casting director got her addicted to the books of Virginia Woolf and how women in repertory theatre felt in charge.

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Do we see being a carer as a feminist failure?

Claire Oshetsky’s new novel Chouette is about raising a non-conforming child, represented by a wild but lovable owl-baby. In this episode of Ourshelves she talks with Lucy Scholes about how wrapping what started out as a memoir in a fantastical world made it possible to be honest, especially about the violence of motherhood. They compare their favourite books about feral children, discuss the role of white feminism in the Afghanistan war, and celebrate the trans women she admires.

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Discovery with CN Lester

How do we keep fighting when there seems to be no hope? CN Lester is a musician, academic, activist and author of Trans Like Me and they tell Lucy Scholes the best advice they’ve been given for continuing to work in the face of backlash. Join their fascinating conversation on their discovery of women composers of the Italian Baroque (who should never have been forgotten!), their newfound love for Ursula K Le Guin (who should have won a Nobel Prize!), and their deeply personal joy in the poetry of Joelle Taylor (who has won the TS Eliot Prize!).

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How does food connect us to our cultural identity? Get hungry listening to Claire Kohda talk to Lucy Scholes about her debut novel Woman, Eating, which follows a mixed-race vampire in contemporary London. Claire admits she avoided reading Dracula, explores the yōkai of traditional Japanese mythology and explains how listening to Asian recipes reminds her of her mother.

Claire’s recommendations:

On the nightstand: Where The Wild Ladies Are, by Matsuda Aoko, translated by Polly Barton, published by Tilted Axis Press and The Korean Vegan

On my mind: Turn Away by Laura Moody (song)

On the shelf: Barbara Hepworth: Writings and Conversations

On the pedestal: Susanne Valadon

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If you spend 288 pages deep in the life of a disabled person, can that experience shift your concept of disability? Join Chloé Cooper Jones, journalist, Pulitzer nominee and author of the new memoir Easy Beauty, as she talks with Lucy Scholes about how beauty can create a powerful mental shift. They discuss the social and political act of making the disabled body visible, the meaning of staring and ask Lewis Hamilton to teach Chloé Formula 1 Racing.

Chloé’s recommendations:

On the nightstand – The Coward by Jarred McGinnis and Staring by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

On your mind – Drive to Survive, the Formula One racing documentary.

On the shelf – Gretel Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces

On the pedestal – Harriet McBryde Johnson, a writer and disability activist.

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What happens if you don’t fall in love with your baby at first sight? Join Kate Maxwell and Lucy Scholes as they challenge silent taboos about motherhood, from Elena Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter to Kate’s first novel Hush, about a woman who struggles with her decision to have a child on her own.

Kate’s recommendations:

On the nightstand: What I Loved, Siri Hustvedt and The Bread the Devil Knead, Lisa Allen-Agostini

On your mind: WeCrashed, Apple TV series

On the shelf: Matrix, Lauren Groff

On the pedestal: Josie Naughton, Choose Love co-founder and CEO

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 What does it take for a woman to migrate thousands of miles across prairies and mountains? Join Katie Hickman, author of Brave Hearted and She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen as she talks with Lucy Scholes about the unique voices of the women who made the Wild West, the strength of oral storytelling and the damage that was done to abortion rights in the USA by religious organisations. From the Americas to Indonesia, the discovery of precious materials has meant a death sentence for indigenous tribes and they discuss the impact of mining on people’s lives and the women who fought to make them better.

Katie’s recommendations:

On the nightstand: Dear Life by Alice Munro and One Thousand and One Nights retold by Hanan Al-Shaykh.

On your mind: Things Fell Apart: strange tales from the culture wars by Jon Ronson (BBC)

On the shelf: Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver

On the pedestal: Mama Yosepha Alonmang. Now in her eighties, this remarkable woman is an Amungme (West Papua) Tribal Leader who has been fighting all her life against environmental destruction of her Tribal lands from mining.

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How can men approach their role as feminist allies? Lucy Scholes meets Stuart Evers, award-winning author of four books including Your Father Sends His Love and The Blind Light as they discuss his introduction to the new Virago Modern Classic edition of Anna Seghers’ brilliant novel Transit, and how its depiction of people caught in the Second World War reminded him of Ukrainians caught in the complex British visa system. He argues about whether Transit is a love story or not, challenges himself to read books he thinks he’ll hate (and falls for them completely) and remembers as a young man how reading feminist novels taught him to listen.

Stuart’s recommendations:

On the nightstand: Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh and Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick

On my mind: Post War Modern art exhibition at the Barbican

On the shelf: Gorilla My Love, Toni Cade Babara

On the pedestal: Marguerite Duras

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How does writing about your life change the way you see it? Cathy Thomas talks to Lucy Scholes about her first book, Islanders, interlocking short stories set on her childhood home, Guernsey – the  pleasure of joining the dots and how playwriting informed her structure. Discovering a shared love of Annie Ernaux’s essays, they dive deeply into whether difficult experiences – from publisher rejections to trauma – may be reframed through the power of writing.

On the nightstand: We Were Young by Niamh Campbell

On my mind: Olivia Fitzsimons' recent essay, Notes on Resilience, for The Stinging Fly

On the shelf: Annie Ernaux's A Girl's Story.

On the pedestal: playwright Caryl Churchill 

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Clare Chambers is the author of nine novels including Small Pleasures, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize. She joins Lucy Scholes to rave about the inimitable Barbara Pym, a Virago Modern Classic author whose love affairs shocked sixties society and who wrote about vicars’ tea parties with waspish humour and moving brilliance. (Tea: ‘a drink she did not much like because of the comfort it was said to bring to those whom she normally despised.’) Together they compare notes on adapting book to screen with Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, how to evoke the inner voice and the recent, genre-defying book that made Clare think about feminism in a new way.

On the nightstand: The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson and Iron Curtain by Vesna Goldsworthy.

On my mind: The TV adaptation of Conversations with Friends.

On the shelf: In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado.

On the pedestal: Fiona Spargo-Mabbs, director of the DSM Foundation, which educates young people to make safer choices around drugs.

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In this special bonus summer episode Sharma Taylor, author of What a Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You, takes us to the heated demi-monde of Kingston, Jamaica, in the 1980s, a turbulent time in politics and gangland crime. She tells Lucy Scholes about writing in patois; the Caribbean authors right now who are representing the strength of women in society; and what her mother sacrificed to buy her books as a child.

On the nightstand: The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini

On my mind: The podcasts Unstoppable Yes You and Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Cocoa Pod

On the shelf: This One Sky Day by Leone Ross

On the pedestal: My mother.

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Shahrukh Husain, editor of The Virago Book of Witches, who says it represents ` womanhood in all its complexity’ is not at all surprised to see a resurgence of interest in `all things witchy’. The witch knows her strength, defies authority and embodies our current fears of injustice. Shah tells Lucy how the witch can be playful but also terrifying, particularly to men, and about a childhood fascination for the witch. The writer she admires is Attia Hussain, author of Sunlight on a Broken Column, who she remembers was` so joyful’ to know Shah was writing. She, alongside Shah’s mother taught her that her cosmopolitan background – Pakistani, Indian, English – was her strength and made her ` a citizen of the world’. They are Shah’s heroines.

Shahrukh's recommendations:

On the nightstand: Dame Joan of Pevensey by Rev. E E Crake

On my mind: the TV-series The Split with Nicola Walker

On the shelf: Sunlight on a Broken Column and Phoenix Fled by Attia Hossein

On the pedestal: My mother, who worked hard for women's rights and the reform of family laws pertaining to women's rights in Pakistan soon after its inception in 1947

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Are families a refuge or a prison? Join Veronica Raimo as she talks with Lucy Scholes about the line between fiction and auto-fiction, drawing the curtain back on the creative process, and the many idiosyncrasies of language that arise during the translation of fiction.

Veronica Raimo is the author of four novels, the most recent of which, Lost On Me (Niente di Vero) was a huge bestseller in Italy, that was shortlisted for the Premio Strega Prize and won the Strega Giovani Prize and the Viareggio Rèpaci Prize. The English translation of Lost On Me is being published by Virago on 3rd August 2023. Veronica contributes cultural articles to various Italian publications, and her translations into Italian include works by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Octavia E. Butler, Ray Bradbury and Ursula K. Le Guin. She lives in Rome.

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Natasha Walter is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, a journalist and human rights activist. Her books include The New Feminism and Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, which was reissued as one of Virago’s 50thAnniversary Five Gold reads this year. On this episode of Ourshelves, Natasha and Lucy Scholes discuss the continued relevance of Living Dolls in terms of the unfinished revolution of feminism and the ongoing effort to liberate ourselves, as women, from stereotypes.

They also dive into Natasha’s upcoming book, Before the Light Fades, a moving memoir about losing her mother to suicide as well as honouring the legacy of a family whose members struggled bravely against some of the worst crises of the twentieth century.

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Victoria Belim is a writer, journalist, and translator of Persian literature and poetry. She speaks eighteen languages, including Japanese, Turkish, and Indonesian. Her memoir, The Rooster House, was published earlier this year by Virago and explores her search for the truth behind an unmentioned family secret - and the Ukrainian people's complex relationship with their Soviet history.

In this episode, Victoria and Lucy Scholes unpick Victoria’s fascination with learning languages; the rich tradition of Ukrainian poetry and the frustrations and excitement of translating it; our obsession with the little details of how other people live; and the continued relevance of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.

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Audrey Osler is Professor Emerita of Citizenship and Human Rights Education at the University of Leeds. Her latest book, Where Are You From? No, Where Are You Really From? will be published by Virago in November and looks at the British Empire through the history of one family. 

This week, join us as Audrey and Lucy dive into ‘Britishness’ and the conflict between identity and belonging; the varied research methods Audrey uses to uncover the minute details of individual lives in history; and the power of stories to bring us together.

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A few members of the Virago team gathered together earlier this year to discuss 2019 reading resolutions and books we are looking forward to reading this year.

In this episode you will hear from Sarah Savitt, Zoe Hood, Hayley Camis, Susan de Soissons, Grace Vincent and Madeleine Hall.

Do you have any reading resolutions? Let us know on Twitter using #ViragoPodcast.

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Enter A Stranger City with Linda Grant.

In this episode of the Virago podcast Lennie Goodings is in conversation with author Linda Grant, discussing her new novel A Stranger City.

Linda Grant is author of five non-fiction books and seven novels. She won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000 and the Lettre Ulysses Prize for Literary Reportage in 2006. The Clothes on Their Backs was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008 and went on to win the South Bank Show Award. The Dark Circle was shortlisted for the 2017 Women's Prize for Fiction.

About A Stranger City:

When a dead body is found in the Thames, caught in the chains of HMS Belfast, it begins a search for a missing woman and confirms a sense that in London a person can become invisible once outside their community - and that assumes they even have a community. A policeman, a documentary film-maker and an Irish nurse named Chrissie all respond to the death of the unknown woman in their own ways. London is a place of random meetings, shifting relationships - and some, like Chrissie intersect with many. The film-maker and the policeman meanwhile have safe homes with wives - or do they? An immigrant family speaks their own language only privately; they have managed to integrate - or have they? The wonderful Linda Grant weaves a tale around ideas of home; how London can be a place of exile or expulsion, how home can be a physical place or an idea. How all our lives intersect and how coincidence or the randomness of birth place can decide how we live and with whom.

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In this episode Julia Bueno and Sarah Savitt discuss miscarriage, women's health and Julia's book The Brink of Being: Talking about Miscarriage.

A captivating mixture of memoir, stories from the consulting room, history and science, The Brink of Being is a much-needed, comprehensive look at the common yet still taboo experience of miscarriage.

'A much needed book on this difficult and often unspoken loss, that of early pregnancy ... both illuminating and consoling.' Julia Samuel, author of Grief Works

It estimated that one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage and yet it persists as taboo. In The Brink of Being, a groundbreaking and essential book, psychotherapist Julia Bueno encourages us to talk about, think more, and reflect upon this often misunderstood, and little discussed event. 

Drawing on her personal experience of miscarriage, stories from her consulting room, and interviews with medical professionals and researchers, Bueno provides history, context and consolation for anyone who has been through pregnancy loss, or wants to know how to help someone who has. 

Bueno also investigates miscarriage in terms of how we respond to women's bodies and reproductive health, our attitudes to birth and death, and how we can - and should - encourage more curiosity and candid conversations, in order to better support the many affected by this loss.

Books recommended in this podcast:

Miscarriage: What every Woman needs to know by Professor Lesley Regan

Coming to Term: Uncovering the Truth About Miscarriage by John Cohen

The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

The World's Two Smallest Humans by Julia Copus

Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir by Hilary Mantel

What Mothers Do and How Mothers Love by Naomi Stadland

For more from Julia visit her website: http://www.juliabueno.co.uk/ or follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JBueno_UKCP and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julia_bueno_therapist/?hl=en

To find out more about the Miscarriage Association here: https://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjeKFr4D94wIVCbTtCh3TvA94EAAYASAAEgKwpfD_BwE

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This month, we speak to Caroline O'Donoghue about her debut novel, Promising Young Women. Promising Young Women is a gothic, darkly witty novel about sex, power, work and being a young woman in a man's world. It is out now in hardback.

'I loved it. The writing is whipsmart and so witty. A fabulous and timely novel.' Marian Keyes

'So brilliant ... Compelling and illuminating ... I highly recommend it.' Dolly Alderton

'A future classic.' Jane Casey

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Ahead of our second Virago Speakeasy, we are delighted to share a live recording of our inaugural Speakeasy event at Pages Cheshire Street: On Witches.

At this event Virago editor Rose Tomaszewska chatted to Shahrukh Husain, author of The Virago Book of Witches, and Imogen Hermes Gowar, author of The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock about the transgressive place of witches in literature, society, history and contemporary politics. Listen to the end for a chilling reading from The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton by Virago Modern Classics editor Donna Coonan.

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Who is your feminism for?

Austin Channing Brown was named by parents who deliberately wanted people to presume their daughter was a white man when applying for jobs. Now a speaker and writer working for Racial Justice in the US and the author of I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, she explains how her hopefulness is not rooted in white people but in the work. With candour, insight and a lot of laughter, she tells Lucy why her recent bestseller’s royalty check only reinforced her resolution that economic success should not determine her feminist principles, reveals that ‘a woman becoming herself’ is her favourite fiction genre and raves about the beauty of textile art that recalls our foremothers.

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This month Chair of Virago Press, Lennie Goodings, chatted to Katie Hickman about her new book: She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen: British Women in India 1600 – 1900.  

She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen is an extraordinary and illuminating book that tells the incredible stories of the first British women to set foot in India - 250 years before the Raj.

In this landmark book, celebrated chronicler, Katie Hickman, uncovers stories, until now hidden from history: here is Charlotte Barry, who in 1783 left London a high-class courtesan and arrived in India as Mrs William Hickey, a married 'lady'; Poll Puff who sold her apple puffs for 'upwards of thirty years, growing grey in the service'; Mrs Hudson who in 1617 was refused as a trader in indigo by the East Indian Company, and instead turned a fine penny in cloth; Julia Inglis, a survivor of the siege of Lucknow; Amelia Horne, who witnessed the death of her entire family during the Cawnpore massacres of 1857; and Flora Annie Steel, novelist and a pioneer in the struggle to bring education to purdah women. 

For some it was painful exile, but for many it was exhilarating. Through diaries, letters and memoirs (many still in manuscript form), this exciting book reveals the extraordinary life and times of hundreds of women who made their way across the sea and changed history.

Find out more: https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/titles/katie-hickman/she-merchants-buccaneers-and-gentlewomen/9780349008264/

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Whose narrative do you believe?

In this episode of OurShelves Lucy Scholes interviews Melatu Uche Okorie, author of This Hostel Life. Lucy and Melatu discuss Milkman by Anna Burns, Rosa Parks and the importance of challenging the narrative.

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What can we learn from African women’s movements?

If you knew about the women who fought a freedom war in 1914 Nigeria, would it alter your view of feminist history? Chibundu Onuzo, award-winning author and performer, talks to Lucy Scholes about her new novel Sankofa. Join a conversation of riotous laughs and deep thinking as Chibundu tells Lucy about the economics of cheating, Ugandan Mwenkanokano and why the Nigerian Elena Ferrante is her favourite book.

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Can We All Be Feminists? is "the intersectional feminist anthology we all need to read" (Bustle), edited by June Eric-Udorie, a remarkable and inspiring twenty-year-old activist who the BBC named one of 100 "inspirational and influential women" of 2016.

At this year's Durham Book Festival 2018, Hayley Camis (Virago Publicity Manager) spoke to contributor Soofiya Andry about their essay 'Deviant Bodies'. Soofiya is a visual artist, illustrator and designer and has an essay in the collection about gender, non-conforming, bodies and feminism.

This episode was recorded live and includes an audience Q&A at the end.

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Fill your August with books with this list of reading recommendations from members of the Virago team.

Books discussed in this episode:

Crimson by Niviaq Korneliussen

Three Women by Lisa Taddeo

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

House of Glass by Susan Fletcher

Girl by Edna O'Brien

A View of the Harbour by Elizabeth Taylor

The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read by Philippa Perry

Let us know what you are reading this summer on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

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Get inspired for 2020 with some reading recommendations from the Virago team.

A few members of the Virago team got together to discuss our reading recommendations and resolutions for the new decade! With titles like Big Friendship, The Street and How Much of These Hills is Gold, among others, our TBR stacks are growing ever taller.

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In October 2013 two teenage sisters left Oslo for Syria. What follows is the gripping, heartbreaking story of a family ripped apart. While Sadiq risks his own life to bring his daughters back, at home his wife Sara begins to question their life in Norway.

We spoke to author Åsne Seierstad about her new book, Two Sisters. Two Sisters is a powerful and gripping true account of a family torn apart - by the author of the international bestseller, The Bookseller Of Kabul.

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How do you balance motherhood and creativity?

In this episode of OurShelves Lucy Scholes interviews Daisy Johnson, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Fen, Everything Under and Sisters, on rewriting the haunted house, why women are expected to use personal lives in fiction, and how books on motherhood are creating a feminist conversation.

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Would you become a surrogate mother?

Publishing her first novel over the age of fifty, Susan Spindler writes brilliantly about post-menopausal life in her thriller Surrogate. Join her and Lucy Scholes as they discuss why older women are forced to emulate fertility or risk being called a ‘hag’ and to hear them talk about mothers in recent literature – from joyful physical intimacy to inherited trauma and the curious cases of women addicted to pregnancy.

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Take a ride atop the Number 12 bus with national treasure, Sandi Toksvig.

In this episode Chair of Virago Press Lennie Goodings chats with the one and only Sandi Toksvig about her long-awaited memoir, Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus. Well known for her television and radio work as a broadcaster, writer, activist and comic on stage, screen and radio, Sandi Toksvig also writes for theatre and television: her film The Man starred Stephen Fry and Zoe Wanamaker and her play Bully Boy starring Anthony Andrews opened the St James Theatre in 2012. In 2016 Sandi took over as chair on QI and in 2017 she started presenting The Great British Bake Off.

Between the Stops is A funny and moving trip through memories, musings and the many delights on the Number 12 route, Between the Stops is also an inspiration to us all to get off our phones, look up and to talk to each other because as Sandi says: 'some of the greatest trips lie on our own doorstep'.

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What is the first book you saw yourself reflected in?

In this episode Lucy and Liv discuss short storytelling, bingeing I May Destroy You and creating spaces where people can hold truth to power.

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How can we reconsider failure?

In this episode of OurShelves Lucy Scholes interviews Linda Grant, a multi-award-winning author whose latest novel, A Stranger City, is out now in paperback. In this episode Lucy and Linda discuss Barbara Pym, Mrs. America and the importance of recalling our failures as well as our successes.

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How much courage does it take to write?

In this episode of OurShelves Lucy Scholes interviews Lennie Goodings, Chair of Virago Press and author of A Bite of the Apple. We dive into stories about Maya Angelou and Rosamond Lehmann, the origins of Virago Press in the seventies, the narratives that shape our lives and the authors who continue to inspire Lennie's work and personal life.

Join us for a conversation about courageous women, beautiful prose and the nature of storytelling.

Books discussed in this episode include:

Flights by Olga Tokarczuk

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

Home by Marilynne Robinson

Jack by Marilynne Robinson

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Mouth Full of Blood by Toni Morrison

We Need Silence to Find Out What We Think by Shirley Hazzard

Difficult Women by Helen Lewis

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

House in Paris by Elizabeth Bowen

Recommended Article: 

That Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief by Scott Berinato

Home - an essay from Mouth Full of Blood by Toni Morrison

What to watch: 

Ella Fitzgerald: Just One of Those Things

Tune in next time for more conversation about books, feminism and culture.

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To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Virago Modern Classics, we sat down with Donna Coonan (Editorial Director) as well as to discuss our baker’s dozen of stunning, deluxe paperbacks and hardback anthology. Later in the episode, Donna speaks to the series designer, Hannah Wood, about the beautiful artwork created by illustrator, Yehrin Tong.

Throughout the podcast you will hear the Virago team speaking about each of the books included in the collection.

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Does nostalgia change the way you feel about the past?

In this episode of OurShelves Lucy Scholes interviews Margaret Atwood, two-time winner of the Man Booker Prize and author of more than forty works, including fiction, poetry and critical essays. From the medieval inspiration for Game of Thrones to editing out mosquitos from your memories, this episode is a goldmine of facts, guilty pleasures and a little bit on the joy of Hercule Poirot.

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In honour of Equal Pay Day 2019, we welcome Carrie Gracie to the podcast. In this episode Carrie discusses her experience fighting for equal pay and her book, Equal, with Chair of Virago Press, Lennie Goodings.

In January 2018, Gracie left her post as the BBC's China editor, following a career at the BBC that spanned more than three decades, in protest at unequal pay, publishing an open letter to BBC audiences and giving evidence before a parliamentary committee. Six months later, she won an apology from the BBC. She donated all her back pay to the gender equality charity, the Fawcett Society, to help low-paid women facing pay discrimination. She continues to serve as a BBC News presenter, and as a member of the 'BBC Women' group, she campaigns for a more equal, fair and transparent pay structure at the national broadcaster.

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Virago has been home to the wonderful Sarah Waters since 1998, when her debut novel Tipping the Velvet was published to rave reviews. Tipping the Velvet is an exuberant, exultant novel. It's saucy and sensuous and followers the glittering career of Nan King, oyster girl turned music hall star turned rent-boy turned East End tom turned feminist. It was a revolutionary novel.

Twenty years on, Sarah Waters is one of Britain's most acclaimed novelists; her novels have won praise and awards, and been adapted for theatre, film and television. She is one of our best-selling writers, praised by the critics and loved by you, her readers.

Sarah Waters launches our new Virago podcast: we met to discuss Tipping the Velvet and Virago’s 20th Anniversary edition, for which she has written a new afterword.

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This Virago podcast features Virago Publisher Sarah Savitt in conversation with biographer and journalist Sonia Purnell, discussing Sonia's latest book, A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of WWII's Most Dangerous Spy, Virginia Hall.

A Woman of No Importance tells the incredible untold story of Virginia Hall, an American woman with a wooden leg who infiltrated Occupied France for the SOE and became the Gestapo's most wanted Allied spy.

Discover five additional unsung heroines on the Virago blog: https://www.virago.co.uk/five-unsung-heroines-by-sonia-purnell/

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