A public lecture by Peter Wilson (University of Sydney). Free, all welcome, no booking required.

General Julius Caesar has returned from war with a disturbing new determination to rule – alone. Popular, charming and ruthless, Caesar has the love of the people and seems bent on destroying democracy itself.

Brutus and Cassius decide to act. But what happens after you’ve murdered the most powerful person in the world?

Nova Theatre transplant the action from the Roman streets to an all-female military unit in this exhilarating, gender-reversed production.

Book Launch with Author & Translator: Yan Ge (顏歌)’s The Chilli Bean Paste Clan, translated by Nicky Harman

https://www.facebook.com/events/605485149803274/

2018/May/07 Monday 5-7PM Ho Tim Seminar Room, China Centre, St Hugh’s College, Oxford

Open and free of charge for all

Supported by: Oxford Chinese Studies Society

To welcome everyone back to Oxford in this Trinity Term, we have invited one of the most important writers of China’s post-1980 generation, Yan Ge, to share with us her experiences as a young writer in China and abroad. She will bring her seminal work, The Chilli Bean Paste Clan (《我們家》in Chinese, published in 2013), and discuss issues of family, language, morality, capitalism and more, with the novel’s English translator Nicky Harman. The Chilli Bean Paste Clan the English translation will be published by Balestier Press and available on the market from the 1st of May, 2018, adding a fresh voice in the growing field of literature in translation.

Synopsis of The Chilli Bean Paste Clan:

Set in a fictional town in West China, this is the story of the Duan-Xue family, owners of the lucrative chilli bean paste factory, and their formidable matriarch. As Gran’s eightieth birthday approaches, her middle-aged children get together to make preparations. Family secrets are revealed and long-time sibling rivalries flare up with renewed vigour. As Shengqiang struggles unsuccessfully to juggle the demands of his mistress and his wife, the biggest surprises of all come from Gran herself……

Professor David Der-wei Wang 王德威 of Harvard University has commented on Yan Ge and her work and hinted that she might signal a generational shift in the Chinese literary scene:
“She writes about her hometown. The stories in a small Sichuanese town are greatly done. She has her own worldviews, and frankly speaking, she is of a very fortunate generation. What she may have encountered as she grew up is not as tumultuous or adventurous as the writers that came before her, and therefore the factor of imagination has gradually come to matter more than experiences in reality.
她写她的故乡，四川一个小城的故事，写得很好。她有她的世界观，但坦白地讲，他们都是有幸的一代，在她成长的过程里面，她所遭遇的不如过去那辈作家有那么多的坎坷或者冒险性，所以，想象的成分已经逐渐地凌驾了现实经验的体会。”

This event will be of interest to those of you who work on contemporary China, Chinese literature, translation studies, and publishing. The conversation between Yan Ge and Nicky Harman will last around 30 minutes and we will leave plenty of time for critical dialogues, Q & A and discussions.

Books available for purchase at a discounted rate.

Speaker biography:

Yan Ge was born in Sichuan Province, China in 1984. She is a writer as well as a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature. Publishing since 1994, she is the author of eleven books in Chinese. Her works have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Hungarian. She was a visiting scholar at Duke University from 2011 to 2012 and a residency writer at the Cross Border Festival in Netherlands in November 2012. Named by People’s Literature magazine as one of twenty future literature masters in China, she is now the chairperson of China Young Writers’ Association and a contract writer of Sichuan Writers’ Association. She recently started writing in English. Her English stories could be seen on Irish Times and Stand Magazine. She lives in Dublin with her husband and son.

Nicky Harman is a British translator of Chinese literature, and one of the most influential figures in the field. She is co-Chair of the Translators Association (Society of Authors) and co-founded Paper Republic 纸托邦, one of the most important online forums for Chinese literatures in translation. She taught on the MSc in Translation at Imperial College until 2011 and now translates full-time from Chinese. The authors she has translated include Jia Pingwa贾平凹，Yan Geling 严歌苓，Chan Koon-chung 陈冠中，Annibaobei 安妮宝贝，Chen Xiwo陈希我，Yan Ge颜歌，and Han Dong韩东, to name just a few. She has won several awards with her translations.

A public lecture by Ben Morgan (University of Oxford). Free, all welcome, no booking required.

How do we define a sound or a taste for which our language does not have a dedicated word?

Typically, we borrow words from another sensory modality. Wines, for example, are often described by words that belong to other sensory perceptions: a “soft flavour” borrows the adjective soft from the domain of touch, and a “round taste” borrows the adjective round from the domain of sight.

It remains an interesting open issue to what extent these cross-sensory metaphors are universal across languages, and to what extent they are language-specific.

Dr Francesca Strik Lievers will address these questions and provide an overview of the latest scientific discoveries in the field, using examples taken from different languages. Her talk will be followed by an opportunity for questions.

The event is organised and hosted by Creative Multilingualism in collaboration with TORCH. Creative Multilingualism is a research programme led by the University of Oxford and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the Open World Research Initiative.

Participation is free and open to the public. We provide FREE LUNCH to all participants.

12.30-13.00 – lunch and mingling

13.00-14.00 – talk and discussion

A public lecture by Nurit Yaari (Tel Aviv University). Free, all welcome, no booking required.

As part of Think Human Festival, this one-off pop-up event is a unique opportunity for visitors of all ages to interact with leading academics from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes University. The academics will act as ‘human books’ from a range of perspectives; historic, literary, political, legal and educational for 15 minutes per ‘book loan’ against the back drop of revolution. ‘RESIST! REMAIN!’ will provide the chance to engage with and access humanities and social science disciplines in a fun, original and inspiring way, and aims to create a lasting impression of how these subjects can help to understand what it is to be human.

Please note that this event is free, open to all ages and there is no need to book ahead. Please come to Bonn Square and start a interesting conversation around revolution!

In “This is Who I am: LGBT+ Asylum Monologues”, theatre company ice&fire will present an empowering and challenging performance with first-hand accounts of LGBT+ people seeking asylum in the UK. 7.30pm on 18 May. Tickets £3 on the door or online from Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/this-is-who-i-am-lgbt-asylum-monologues-oxford-pride-tickets-45524894184?aff=es2

You are a German citizen living under the Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler—do you resist or comply? Featuring dramatic monologues and explanatory interludes this event introduces the audience to two real-life historical characters: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian theologian, and Adolf Eichmann, a member of the Nazi bureaucracy.

Bonhoeffer was executed in 1945, having served time in prison for his staunch opposition to Nazism. Eichmann was executed in 1962 in Israel for helping to organise the deportation of Jews to killing centres and sites during the Holocaust. We meet both men during their time in captivity and watch as they ponder their actions and seek to make sense of the horrors unleashed by the Nazis.

Bonhoeffer is clearly a good man. But what was it that inspired his heroic resistance to the Nazis—why, when so many other Christians chose not to act, did he put his life on the line? Eichmann is clearly a villain. And yet, as he himself protested, he was only doing his job. He followed rather than made orders and he was not directly responsible for the death of anyone. Is he, as the philosopher Hannah Arendt once argued, a terrifying instance of “the banality of evil?”

Based on the writings of Bonhoeffer and the records of the police and court interrogations of Eichmann, this event offers a unique portrait of good and evil during one of the darkest moments of the twentieth century.

Join Human Story Theatre for Scenes From… three new plays about young people’s mental health.

Human Story Theatre are an Oxfordshire based company who only produce new writing with a health or social care issue at heart. HST are delighted to unearth the local talent of Brookes University Creative Writing and Drama students who will perform scenes alongside professional actors. Think Human Festival is delighted to host this platform for two local playwrights, (Nick O’Dwyer and Gaye Poole writer of Connie’s Colander, Flat 73 and DRY for Human Story Theatre), and to showcase new writing from Brookes’ own students inspired by their work with Helen Mosby (Writing for Performance Tutor), Lizzy McBain (Artistic Director of Under Construction Theatre Company) and representatives from organisations that work with young people with mental health issues.

The performance will be followed by a Q&A session with members of local mental health support services.

In 2005 Oxford Brookes Professor Tina Miller’s new book Making Sense of Motherhood inspired Sue Bevan to write Mum’s the Word a play which tells the story of Miriam who has walked back into the lives of her daughters who were just ten and twelve years old when she left them during a devastating period of postnatal depression.

We invite you to experience a special Think Human Festival staging of this moving play at Ark T an open and inclusive community centre where people, art and powerful ideas come together.

The show is followed by a question and answer session with Sue Bevan and Tina Miller and an opportunity for the audience to contribute directly to Tina’s current research on Motherhood.

Age 16+ Creche available on site during the performance
This event is free, booking is required.

阴道之道l 牛津·女权话剧

Our Vaginas, Ourselves l Chinese Vagina Monologues at Oxford
The play will be performed in Chinese with English subtitles.

The Vagina Monologues is an episodic play written by Eve Ensler based on interviews with more than 200 women from different social-cultural backgrounds. Ensler wrote the piece to “celebrate the vagina”.

In 1996, The Vagina Monologues premiered at HERE Arts Center, Off-Off-Broadway in New York, and it was awarded the Obie Award for ‘Best New Play’ that same year. Ensler’s play has since been translated to more than 40 languages, and performed on the stages of over 140 countries.

In 2012, a drama-focused group, BCome, inspired by the Vagina Monologues, created an original episodic play, Our Vagina, Ourselves, based on interviews with Chinese women. The play is around an hour and a half in length, and the scripts .draw from interviews as well as the personal experiences and opinions that BCome members have on social issues.

In Our Vagina, Ourselves, women are not treated as victims, but as active subjects who have autonomy and agency. It therefore proposes an alternative reading of gender violence and integrates anger and grief with joy, satire and humour. It also challenges the marginalization of “the others” and brings forward the rights of LGBTs, and it cares deeply about intersectionality, especially among gender, sexuality and class.

On March 20, 2018, Our Vagina, Ourselves was performed in the lecture theatre of SOAS by a group of performers consisting mainly of oversea Chinese students.

On June 12, 2018, it will be performed again at Oxford!
See you then, when we will tell you all about Our Vaginas, Ourselves.

Organizing bodies：VaChina, OCSS (Oxford Chinese Studies Society), and BPCS (British Postgraduate Network for Chinese Studies)

Acting Crew: VaChina
VaChina, established in September 2017, is a UK-based Chinese feminist network officially registered at SOAS with members from various higher education institutions including in SOAS，LSE，Oxford，Cambridge，UCL，UAL, and Essex. VaChina aims to create a supportive and friendly environment for all gender and sexualities, advocates for justice within the field of gender, and promotes gender equality via different means, including theatre.

Scripts ：BCome
Founded in 2012, BCome is a feminist group based in Beijing. Led by the youth, the BCome group initiates campaigns for women’s rights and against gender-based violences.

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/358499304639795/
Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/our-vagina-ourselves-at-oxford-tickets-45627591354?aff=efbeventtix

Through the centuries, the craft of storytelling has been developed with the help of technology – candlelight, printing press, electricity, film and the internet have all been incorporated into the way we make theatre. But this relationship is also inverted: performance design has challenged technology to create new ways to present live drama and interact with the audience. When staging a contemporary production of The Tempest recently, the Royal Shakespeare Company asked Intel and the Imaginarium Studios to work with us, exploring technologies to render cinematic environments in real time. For the first time ever, we created an animated character live on the RSC stage, using innovative real-time performance capture.

Such collaborations bring new audiences to Shakespeare and showcase the best of British creativity globally. There is vast potential for creative collaboration between technology companies and theatre, and the research and development carried out for such productions allows both theatre and technology sectors to learn new skills, developed new tools, and explore new ways of working.

In this talk, we will explore how theatre continues to impact the future of entertainment by pushing the boundaries of technology further still while maintaining a creative focus. At the RSC we have exciting experimentation in development with digital technology companies across the world. We’re engaging in research and development across virtual, augmented and mixed reality, and are always looking for ways to bring the very best live experience to our audiences and amplify that in new and digitally ways.

Simon Stephens is one of the UK’s most exciting playwrights. His plays include Punk Rock, A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky, and the stage adaptation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Most recently, he wrote the National Theatre’s adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, which is being produced by students from the University of Oxford this autumn.

Ahead of the students’ production, Simon joins us to chat about his life and work.

Age guideline 12+

Duration: 1 hour with no interval

Tickets: FREE with a ticket to see The Threepenny Opera (call the Ticket Office on 01865 305305) or £5 without a ticket to The Threepenny Opera.

Emma Rice is one the UK’s most well-loved and distinctive theatre directors.

As the former Artistic Director of Kneehigh and then Shakespeare’s Globe, she has spent decades creating shows which are filled with her trademark mix of joy, wonder and magic. And we’ve been lucky enough to have many of them visit our stage: from the melancholy beauty of The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk to the fire-side storytelling of The Little Matchgirl (and other happier tales) and her bold adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca.

Come and join us, as Emma chats about her career to date, as well as discussing her new company, Wise Children, and their first show, very proudly co-produced by OP.

Age guideline 12+

Duration: 1 hour with no interval

‘Noh’ is classical Japanese theatre, which combines elements of dance, drama, music and poetic text into a highly aesthetic form of art that has been performed continuously for 650 years. In contrast to its minimalist stage, ‘noh’ uses elaborate costumes and exquisitely carved wooden masks such as those acquired at Pitt Rivers Museum from master mask-maker Hideta Kitazawa. This illustrated talk by Jannette Cheong is designed to introduce the key elements of classical ‘noh’. It will be followed by a reading of Jannette’s new ‘noh’ ‘Between the Stones’, which is being prepared for performance, to give a close up and interactive experience of the challenges of developing a new ‘noh’ ‘from page to stage’, using traditional techniques.
Come and join us for this fascinating opportunity to get ‘under the skin’ of this rare UK artist’s work. As the first British person to write a ‘noh’ using traditional techniques, Jannette will unravel the mysteries of this exquisite classical theatre form as she begins her third collaboration with Richard Emmert, and second collaboration with members of the Oshima Noh Theatre family.

Deborah Warner: Changing Directions – Journeys in theatre, opera and installation
Date: Wednesday, 27 February 2019
Time: 5.00pm (Attendees must be seated by 4.45pm)
Venue: Bernard Sunley Lecture Theatre, St Catherine’s College, Manor Road, Oxford, OX1 3UJ

Over her career, Deborah Warner has worked extensively in the fields of theatre, opera and classical music. Examples of her work as a Director include the plays Electra, King Lear and Richard II; and the operas The Turn of the Screw for the Royal Opera, which won the Evening Standard and South Bank Awards; Dido and Aeneas and La Traviata for the Vienna Festival. You can read more about Deborah Warner, and about the Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professorship here.

Places for this event will be allocated by ballot. To register for the ballot, please complete the online form at www.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/deborahwarner by 12.00pm on Friday, 8 February. Please note that entry to the ballot does not automatically entitle applicants to a place at the lecture, but to a place in the draw. Printed confirmation of your ticket to the event will be required in order to attend the lecture.

You will be notified, via email, week commencing Monday, 18 February if you have been successful in securing a place at the lecture. Please contact development.office@stcatz.ox.ac.uk should you have any queries.

Chief Philologist of the Oxford English Dictionary Edmund Weiner will be presenting his talk, “Thew Grew out of their Name” to the Oxford Tolkien Society

Entry free for members, £2 for non-members

“Many words and names in Tolkien’s words seem to have had a complex inner history in his own mind. This talk will look at how Tolkien’s creative philological mind worked. It will be an unhasty ramble around Ent country, looking at names and topics of language construction and language theory, with even a quick visit to Humpty Dumpty!”

ScreenTalk Oxfordshire proudly presents an evening with British Producer Jeremy Thomas. Jeremy has worked with renowned directors including Bertolucci, Nicolas Roeg, Jonathan Glazer and Ben Wheatley producing such great films as ‘The Last Emperor’, ‘Crash’, ‘Sexy Beast’ and ‘High-Rise’.

On Tuesday 5th March at the Lounge Bar, Curzon, Westgate Centre in Oxford, local producer Carl Schoenfeld will be talking to Jeremy Thomas about Directors, Actors, Crews as well as films he has produced and what he has learnt throughout his career.

Join us from 18:15 for a drink and chat in the bar, then at 19:00 with Carl Schoenfeld (ScreenTalk Co-Founder and Steering Group Member) in conversation with Jeremy Thomas (Recorded Picture Company).

There will be a Card/Cash Bar so join us after the talk to catch up and network.

ScreenTalk events are an opportunity to forge and strengthen contacts in Film, TV and Associated Media. For further information and to sign up to our mailing list please email screentalkoxfordshire@gmail.com

We expect this event to be popular and can only take pre-booked (free) tickets for entry.
Tickets: http://bit.ly/2GnlZhi

Blackwell’s are delighted to invite you to join us for a magical evening of light-hearted rehearsed readings as we step into the weird and wonderful world of The Fae.

“Fairy Tale” by Simon Josiffe is the story of a wild-living kelpie who’d rather be in the pub or on her motorbike but unfortunately has to look after us feckless mortals instead.

“Changeling” by Debs Wardle follows a woman who, on her 36th birthday, gets dragged into another realm and informed that she’s a faery who was swapped at birth with a human.

Both pieces will be read to you live by a talented cast of actors.

On Wednesday 22 May, ScreenTalk Oxfordshire proudly presents Harnessing the Power of Video in Business Communications.
An evening with Tim May, MD of Strange Films and Music, talking with Toby Low – MD of MerchantCantos an international agency specialising in bringing creativity to critical business communications; Scott Shillum – CEO of Vismedia, Winner of the 2018 Digital Impact Awards and a pioneer in creating interactive, immersive content fused with cutting edge technology; Clare Holt – Founder of Nice Tree Films in Oxford and a member of ScreenTalk provides videos for businesses, public sector organisations, charities and education; Nicky Woodhouse – Founder of Woodhouse Video Production, award-winning female director of branded content and TVCs for online and broadcast.

Join us on Wednesday 22 May from 18:15 for a drink in the downstairs Lounge Bar, Curzon, Westgate Centre in Oxford, and why not try the Curzon’s excellent Pizza – great quality! At 19:00 Tim May will be talking to Toby Low, Scott Shillum, Clare Holt and Nicky Woodhouse. Afterwards there will be Shout Outs from ScreenTalk members and facilitated networking. At ScreenTalk events we run a Card/Cash Bar so please join us and take advantage of the opportunity to catch up and network.

We expect this event to be popular and can only take pre-booked (free) tickets for entry.

Join the conversation! ScreenTalk events are an opportunity to forge and strengthen contacts in Film, TV and Associated Media.
For further information and to sign up to our mailing list please email screentalkoxfordshire@gmail.com

Coriander Theatre presents a new play ‘My Mother Runs in Zig-Zags’ at the North Wall Arts Centre, 30th May – 1st June 2019, 7:30pm, Saturday Matinee 2:30pm.

Sometimes, race and trauma are like leaky old pipes: you can’t even have a friend over for dinner without something spilling out everywhere and flooding your life in the most unexpected way.

A conversation between friends becomes a journey to the Lebanese and Nigerian civil wars. Half-remembered worlds of violent oral history invade the kitchen and layer themselves over everyday life, shining light on the laughter that heals intergenerational traumas, and celebrating the overflowings and excesses of a life shaped by migration.

With an original musical score, a chorus of performance poets and contemporary dancers, and stories passed on from a generation of migrants, My mother runs in zig-zags is a bold new tragicomedy, devised by the best of Oxford University’s BAME actors and performers.

Age Guidance: 12+

My mother runs in zig zags

For this event, 12 artists from all over the country will be presenting work that they have been making as part of the Sound Diaries open call.

The presenting artists are:

Richard Bentley, Hannah Dargavel-Leafe, Aisling Davis, Atilio Doreste, Marlo De Lara, Beth Shearsby, Kathryn Tovey, Jacek Smolicki, James Green, Lucia Hinojosa, Sena Karahan, Fi.Ona

Sound Diaries expands awareness of the roles of sound and listening in daily life. The project explores the cultural and communal significance of sounds and forms a research base for projects executed both locally and Internationally, in Beijing, Brussels, Tallinn, Cumbria and rural Oxfordshire.

Alongside our conference on 19th October, Greene’s Institute will be hosting our first public event: a special interactive keynote with Professor Henrike Lähnemann (University of Oxford). This event promises to be a fantastic exploration of one of the most important acts of translation in European history. All are welcome.

In this lecture, in honour of Edward Greene, Donald Meek will describe the fascinating process of Gaelic Bible translation in Scotland and Ireland. Beginning with the standard Gaelic Bible, translated between 1767 and 1804, Donald will explain its creation, and its debts to the work of earlier translators and revisers, including the Rev. Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle (who produced ‘Kirk’s Bible in 1690), but pre-eminently to the foundational labours of the translators of the Bible into Classical Gaelic in Ireland in the earlier seventeenth century. Both the principal translators of that period – Bishop William Ó Dómhnaill and Bishop William Bedell – studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where they were trained in biblical languages by the first Master of Emmanuel, Lawrence Chadderton. By way of comparison and contrast, brief reference will be made to the somewhat different histories of Bible translation into Manx and Welsh. The lecture will conclude with some discussion of the profound influence of the Gaelic Bible on the development of modern Scottish Gaelic literature, and its enduring legacy

Lincoln Leads is a series of seminars tackling a different theme every week. All are warmly invited to attend this year’s Shakespeare Seminar on February 27th which will explore the question ‘Can Editing Influence a Play’s Legacy? with Prof. Henry Woudhuysen (Lincoln College), Prof. Lukas Erne (University of Geneva) and Eirian Yem (DPhil in English Literature). The panel will be chaired by Waqas Mirza (DPhil in French and English Literature).

The seminars take place in the Oakeshott Room at Lincoln College on Thursday evenings during Hilary term. Following a free wine reception from 5pm, each seminar will start at 5.45pm, culminating in a lively audience Q&A session that ends at 7pm. We have a fantastic group of panellists scheduled for the series. We therefore hope that you are eager to join them in conversation, and learn more about the diverse research conducted at Lincoln.

Tickets are free, but must be booked in advance. Spaces are limited and going fast, so make sure you sign up by clicking here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lincoln-leads-2020-tickets-87627477143

Do join us at the seminar to find out what Lincoln Leads is all about, and celebrate the diverse research connected with the College.
Bring all your friends, enjoy all the free wine and ask all the questions.

For more information on the seminar series, please visit our pages on social media: Facebook @lincolnleads

Artist, writer and activist Jess Thom has Tourettes syndrome, a neurological condition that means she makes movements and noises she can’t control, called tics. In 2010 she co-founded Touretteshero as a creative response to her experiences, and toured the world with her multi-award-winning stage show, Backstage in Biscuit Land.

Join us for a screening of the 2018 documentary, Me, My Mouth and I, part of BBC Two’s Performance Live strand. Exploring Jess Thom’s funny and unpredictable journey of discovery into one of Samuel Beckett’s most complex plays, Not I, the film asks us to reconsider issues of representation and social exclusion as she prepares to perform the role of ‘Mouth’ in front of a live theatre audience. The screening with be followed by a Q & A with Jess herself.

Touretteshero presents Not I at The North Wall from 18 – 21 March.

About Inspiring People
The Inspiring People series is a joint venture between The North Wall and our principal sponsor, St Edward’s School. Our organisation both have a mission to educate and inspire and our hope is that this series will do just that: half of all tickets are offered free to local schools

This is the Weinrebe Lecture in Life-Writing for Michaelmas Term 2020.

Hermione Lee, whose biography of Tom Stoppard is published by Faber on 1 October, talks about his life and work, and the challenges for a biographer in writing the life of a living subject.

With unprecedented access to private papers, diaries, letters, and countless interviews with figures ranging from Felicity Kendal to John Boorman and Trevor Nunn to Steven Spielberg, Hermione Lee has built a meticulously researched portrait of one of our greatest playwrights. Drawing on several years of long, exploratory conversations with Stoppard himself, it tracks his Czech origins and childhood in India to every school and home he’s ever lived in, every piece of writing he’s ever done, and every play and film he’s ever worked on. This is the revealing story of a very public and very private man.

Hermione Lee was the President of Wolfson College from 2008 to 2017, and is the founder and advisory director of OCLW. She held the Goldsmiths’ Chair of English Literature at Oxford from 1998 to 2008, and before that taught at the Universities of Liverpool and York. Her work includes acclaimed biographies of Virginia Woolf (1996), Edith Wharton (2007) and Penelope Fitzgerald (2013, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography). She has also published books on Elizabeth Bowen, Willa Cather and Philip Roth, and she has written about life-writing, in Body Parts: Essays on Life-Writing (2005), Biography: A Very Short Introduction (2009), and, co-edited with Kate Kennedy, in a collection based on an OCLW conference, called Lives of Houses (2020). Her biography of Tom Stoppard is published by Faber in October 2020. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Royal Society of Literature (where she serves on the Council) and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2013 she was made a Dame for services to literature.

The video of this Weinrebe Lecture in Life-Writing will be available for 24 hours only.