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Call for papers out now for 36th Annual International Woolf Conference: Between the Arts, June 16-20 in Oslo, Norway

Friday 5 June 2026 by Paula Maggio

The call for papers and works is out now for the 36th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Between the Arts , which will be held June 16-20, 2027, at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the University of Oslo in Oslo, Norway. The deadline for submissions is Oct. 15.

Presentation options

Contributions from across the fields of academic and artistic research that emphasize artistic expression, and draws on the inspiration of the Bloomsbury group are welcome. The conference will investigate how the various arts and the senses interact with one another and is looking for contributions that combine artistic and academic approaches.

Twenty-minutes individual presentations, panels, roundtables, workshops and creative works are welcome.

Submissions and more information

The deadline for submissions is Oct. 15. Submissions should be emailed to woolf2027@khio.no.

See more details in the JPEG below, which you download and enlarge for better readability here. As conference planning progresses, more information will be posted on the conference website at https://khio.no/events/2417


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Five Woolf novels among The Guardian’s 100 best

Thursday 4 June 2026 by Paula Maggio

The Guardian newspaper asked 170 novelists, critics and academics for their top 10 works of fiction, ranked in order. Five of the 100 were novels by Virginia Woolf.

Woolf scholar Vara Neverow shared this information via the VWoolf Listserv, and Emilia Castellucci, membership secretary for the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, passed it on to members.

Here are Woolf’s five novels that made The Guardian list:

  • Jacob’s Room (#90 of 100)
  • The Waves (55)
  • Orlando (54)
  • Mrs Dalloway (14) and
  • To the Lighthouse (4).

Comparison to previous poll years

The Guardian ran similar polls in 2003 and 2015, and here is what has changed.

  • More female writers made the list. Thirty-six out of 100 this year,  compared with 21 in 2015 and a paltry 16 in 2003
  • Of women writers, only Jane Austen’s Emma and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein made the top 10 of both previous lists. This year, Emma was number 13 and Frankenstein number 30.

Which novel made the top of the list this year? It is Middlemarch by George Eliot, one of Woolf’s favorites. Of it, she said:

the magnificent book […] with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people’

Stephen King, David Nicholls, Bernardine Evaristo, Salman Rushdie, Anne Enright, Yiyun Li, Elif Shafak, Ian McEwan, Maggie O’Farrell, Colm Tóibín, Lorrie Moore and Katherine Rundell were among those polled. All were asked for their top 10, ranked in order. Any book published in English, but originally written in any language, was eligible.

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Mrs. Dalloway, renamed Clarissa, moves to Nigeria

Sunday 24 May 2026 by Paula Maggio

Clarissa, a film adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs Dalloway, was featured at the Cannes film festival and is expected to be released in the U.S. later this year.

The film transposes the story from London to a modern Nigeria. The Guardian’s film reviewer gives it four stars and describes it as:

a seductively mysterious, languorous, melancholy drama with commanding performances and a great musical score […] set partly in modern-day Lagos, whose ambient streetscapes are conjured up with style, and partly in the more bucolic Abraka in southern Nigeria, 30 years in the past.

Starring Sophie Okonedo as an older Clarissa and David Oyelowo as an older Peter, the film premiered in Cannes earlier this month. Nigerian film-making brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri directed the film.

 

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Final A Room of One’s Own seminar May 21

Wednesday 13 May 2026 by Paula Maggio

The next and final installment in the A Room of One’s Own Seminar, on Woolf’s 1929 essay and its reception in Japan, will take place via Zoom May 21.

It will feature a talk given by independent scholar and translator Aki Katayama.

Katayama is an independent scholar and translator who sometimes teaches part-time at the International Christian University in Tokyo. Her Japanese translations of Virginia Woolf include A Room of One’s Own, Three Guineas, Between the Acts, “Monday or Tuesday,” and several shorter essays.

Her work on Three Guineas inspired her to speak out against the genocide in Palestine. She is currently co-translating the final essays of Refaat Alareer, a professor of English literature at the Islamic University of Gaza.

To get the Zoom link and password, visit the event website.

About A Room of One’s Own: Echos and circulation

The A Room of One’s Own seminars are part of the A Room of One’s Own: Echos and Circulation Project based in France, which offers to take up Virginia Woolf’s landmark essay A Room of One’s Own (1929) and explore its full potential. Nearly a century after the publication of Woolf’s iconic polemic, the project asks, what echo chambers has A Room of One’s Own opened up?

Led by Valérie Favre (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) and Anne-Laure Rigeade (Université Paris Est Créteil), the project will be ongoing until 2029, the centenary of the publication of A Room of One’s Own, and will include seminars, a conference, and a collective publication.

The deadline for the call for papers for the publication is coming right up — May 15, 2026.

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Taught Virginia Woolf’s essays? Beth wants to hear from you

Tuesday 12 May 2026 by Paula Maggio

Beth Rigel Daugherty is working on a sequel to Virginia Woolf’s Apprenticeship: Becoming an Essayist for Edinburgh University Press, and if you have taught Woolf’s essays, she wants to hear from you.

Her request and questions

Share your thoughts about teaching and learning from Virginia Woolf’s essays.

I am particularly interested in how Woolf’s essays affect and influence teachers. – Beth Rigel Daughterty

Beth’s sequel looks at Woolf’s essays through a pedagogical lens. Here are the questions she poses:

  • What have Woolf’s essays taught you about the process of learning and/or the process of teaching?
  • What does she say to you about how and why we educate?
  • How do you use Woolf’s essays in your teaching, whether formal or informal, inside or outside the academy?
  • Would you be willing to share your thoughts with me (Beth) by filling out a survey or talking with me on Zoom?

Details and deadline

More details — her  rationale and goal, eight survey questions, permission forms, and contact information — can be found at this link. Beth asks that respondents fill out this Google Form or email answers to woolfessaysurvey@gmail.com, preferably by August 31, 2027.

Ever gracious, Beth adds, “Thank you so much for considering my request.”

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