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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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Much planned for June 13 Dalloway Day in London

Tuesday 5 May 2026 by Paula Maggio

Mark your calendar for Saturday, June 13, to celebrate #DallowayDay in London. Here’s the schedule. More events and Eventbrite links will be added later.

11.30 a.m.–12.30 p.m.: A Bloomsbury Walk

A sell-out crowd for the Dalloway Day event at Hatchard in 2025.

Guided by Clara Jones, participants will saunter in the streets and squares of Virginia Woolf’s beloved Bloomsbury.

Please note: the walk is available only for those with All-Event Tickets. Organizers will send ticket-holders details of the meeting place by email.

Dr. Jones is senior lecturer in Modern Literature at King’s College London. She is the author of Virginia Woolf: Ambivalent Activist and the forthcoming British Interwar Women Writers, and editor of an essay collection, Virginia Woolf and Capitalism.

2 – 3 p.m.: A Woolf in the Archives

In conversation with Maggie Humm, Nicola Wilson and editors from the Times Literary Supplement will discuss “Virginia Woolf: Reader and Writer'” in relation to her work as publisher alongside Leonard Woolf and as a regular critic and reviewer.

“Snapshots of Bloomsbury” by Maggie Humm

Professor Wilson is professor of Book and Publishing Studies at the University of Reading and co-director of the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing. Her publications include Scholarly Adventures in the Digital Humanities: Making the Modernist Archives Publishing Project (2019) and Recommended! The Influencers Who Changed How We Read (2025).

Professor Humm is Vice-Chair of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain. She is the author/editor of twenty books, many focusing on Woolf and the arts. Her novel Talland House, based on Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, won the Women’s Fiction International Impact Book Award 2024. The Bloomsbury Photographs won the American Writing Awards 2025 for photography, and her most recent book is Snapshots: Autobiography, Virginia Woolf, Writing and the Visual.

3 – 4 p.m.: Book signing, informal meet-the-authors, soft drinks & cupcakes

4 – 5 p.m.: Art, Friendship and Roger Fry

Fiona McKenzie Johnson, whose biography Roger Fry: Bloomsbury and the Invention of Modern Art has recently been published by Triglyph Books, will discuss Fry’s life as a pioneering curator and artist, and in particular his friendship with Virginia Woolf, whose own biography of him was published in 1940.

Jean Moorcroft Wilson on the doorstep of 46 Gordon Square, Woolf’s first Bloomsbury home, during Dalloway Day 2018. A blue plaque is to the right of the front door.

Posted in events, Mrs. Dalloway | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

Woolf scholars in the news

Saturday 2 May 2026 by Paula Maggio

Here is news about projects from Woolf scholars around the globe.

Maggie Humm and Snapshots

Maggie Humm’s new book, Snapshots: Autobiography, Virginia Woolf, Writing and the Visual, published by Edinburgh University Press, is now out and receiving much acclaim. Read about it on USA Book DNA and on the EUP blog.

The book provides a survey and analysis of feminist criticism from the 1970s and an historical account of UK women’s writing from 1900 to the present. It also brings together Humm’s pioneering work on feminist literary criticism, Virginia Woolf, film and visual cultures.

Look below for the code to get a 30 percent discount on Snapshots from EUP.

Humm is an emeritus professor and vice-chair of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain whose last book was The Bloomsbury Photographs.

Yolanda Hartshorne and Woolf’s shorter fiction

“A Spatial Reading of Virginia Woolf’s Shorter Fiction” a Ph.D. thesis by Yolanda Hartshorne is now openly accessible online under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND).

In it, she places Woolf’s texts in their non-fictional historical contexts in an effort to understand the societal expectations of the times.

Hartshorne is also the author of “The Business of Marriage in Virginia Woolf’s ‘Phyllis and Rosamond”: Conventional and Transgressive Spaces” and was awarded Distinction Cum Laude from the University of Oviedo, Spain.

Martin Ferguson Smith and two books

Martin Ferguson Smith, professor emeritus of Classics, Durham University and member of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain who is now in his eighties, has two new books out.

  • Urbi et Orbi: The Epicurean Inscription and Prescription of Diogenes of Oinoanda Tab Edizioni, Rome, March 2026, paperback and Open Access
  • Martin the Epicurean (autobiography), SilverWood, Bristol, 15 April 2026, paperback and ebook. For other information, including about the earlier books of the writer’s eighties, In and Out of Bloomsbury (2021; paperback 2023) and The Artist Helen Coombe (2023), visit http://www.martinfergusonsmith.com

Posted in books, photographs, photography, short stories, Virginia Woolf | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

Apply by May 18 to be Writer in Residence in England

Thursday 30 April 2026 by Paula Maggio

The Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP) and the archives of the Hogarth Press is looking for a Writer in Residence to start work this June in preparation for a major 2027 exhibition celebrating the University of Reading’s holdings relating to the Bloomsbury Group. The exhibit will be held March through May 2027.

About the Writer in Residence position

The person chosen will spend June through September 2026 drawing inspiration from MAPP archival materials to develop new creative work for an exhibit. From September to December 2026, they will build on this research to support community and youth engagement in Reading, leading monthly workshops with the Museum of English Rural Life’s  Youth Panel.

The Writer in Residence will work with young people aged 14-18 to explore and connect with the publishing stories and materials in MAPP in imaginative and accessible ways, encouraging fresh perspectives and new interpretations.

These interpretations may engage with themes including, but not limited to: 

  • Class
  • Colonialism
  • Gender, feminism and women’s authorship
  • LGBTQIA+ identities and experiences
  • Mental health and creativity
  • Modernism, publishing, and literary experimentation
  • Networks of writers and artistic collaboration
  • Print culture, letterpress, materiality, and book-making
  • Rural and country lives
  • Relationships between art, literature and landscape
  • Social inclusion and justice

Position sponsorship

This Writer in Residence has been made possible by the University of Reading’s Impact Accelerator Account, funded by the AHRC. The fee is £3,000, and the closing date for applications is 18 May 2026.

How to apply

Get full details and how to apply.

Roundtable participants from the MAPP project at the 2017 Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf sit below a screen showing a digitized ledger sheet from the Hogarth Press. Note the purple ink.

Stacks showing a portion of the Hogarth Press archives at University of Reading Special Collections.

Cecil Woolf, the nephew of Leonard and Virginia Woolf, cuts the cake designed by Cressida Bell for the 100th birthday party of the Hogarth Press in June 2017 in Reading, England. Cecil passed away June 10, 2019, at the age of 92. Read more.

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