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Archive for February, 2014

Maggie Gee

Maggie Gee

Here’s something to look forward to: Virginia Woolf in Manhattan by Maggie Gee. Telegram Books will publish the novel in September.

It imagines what might happen if Woolf came back to life today and appeared to a British writer researching Woolf’s manuscripts at the Berg Collection in the New York Public Library. Woolf scams Manhattan bookstores with “rare signed editions” and the two travel to Turkey, where Woolf crashes an international conference on herself.

Virginia Woolf in Manhattan is a sparkling and profound novel about female friendship and rivalry, and how, amid the madness of modernity, we can begin to make sense of our lives,” says the blurb on the publisher’s website.

Gee is the author of eleven acclaimed novels, including The White Family (shortlisted for the orange and imPac prizes), My Cleaner and My Driver, and a memoir, My Animal Life. she is a Fellow and vice-president of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University.

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Once again, Virginia Woolf has influenced runway fashions, this time at London Fashion Week. Check out these links for references to Woolf, Charleston, Bloomsbury and fashion:Screen Shot 2014-02-22 at 10.08.39 AM

  • Handpainted Burberry fashions, a la Charleston Farmhouse. Read the New York Times story.
  • London Fashion Week autumn/winter 2014 blog: Days one, two and three in The Telegraph.
  • “The inspiration is Virginia Woolf — very poetic and super fragile as if the girl has never been out in the sun,” said the makeup artist in a Women’s Wear Daily story that also refers to the Woolf look as “a bit of a mad woman.”

Read fashion sightings from the past.

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This collection of Woolf sightings includes a seasonal approach to Woolf (1) and mentions of World War I (10, 11).Orlando at American Conservatory Theater

  1. Appropriate for the season: How Five Literary Characters (including gloomy Orlando) Deal With Winter.
  2. Nora in The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud, works on a series of tiny dioramas, including one depicting Virginia Woolf putting rocks in her pockets at Rodmell. More on this sighting of Woolf in contemporary fiction.
  3. Jim Brock turned to Virginia Woolf for inspiration in writing his new play, “Because Beauty Must Be Broken Daily” in Florida.
  4. Tove Jansson compared to Virginia Woolf.
  5. Between the Lines,” a set of collages based on women in literature, including Virginia Woolf.
  6. Billilla, a grand old house in Brighton, is a place of one’s own to write fiction as part of the Bayside City Council’s Artist in Residence Program.
  7. Add the Internet as a necessity, along with a room and an income, for women who want to write.
  8. The influence of Middlemarch, which Woolf touted as “one of the few English novels for grown-up people.”
  9. Woolf, economic independence & empowerment in a modern context. Read more.
  10. Finally, a WWI anthology that is diverse — but includes no Woolf and no West.
  11. A high school academic decathlon focusing on WWI and including Woolf’ “Mark on the Wall.”
  12. Woolf an influence on John Hennessy.
  13. Almost an allusion to Virginia Woolf in Dylan’s “Desolation Row.”
  14. “Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors,” an exhibition at London’s Freud Museum featuring women’s eperiences, including Virginia Woolf’s.
  15. Does Mrs. Dalloway need a trauma trigger warning?
  16. Start Here, Volume 2 helps you read your way into 25 authors, including Virginia Woolf.
  17. A few more tales from the amazing life of Ruth Gruber.
  18. A Bryn Mawr swimmer visits sites abroad, including those of Woolf and the Bloomsbury group.
  19. Despite Virginia Woolf and Mary Shelly, sexism rampant among science fiction writers.

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The 2014 Independent Bath Literature Festival runs Feb. 28 to March 9 and includes 200 authors and vw gardenperformers talking to an audience of over 20,000, along with interactive events. Among them is an unusual take on Virginia Woolf that marks the 85th anniversary of A Room of One’s Own.

It’s a spoken-word tour of the garden at Monk’s House in Sussex. It will be guided by Caroline Zoob, one-time custodian of Woolf’s garden at Monk’s House in Sussex, and author of Virginia Woolf’s Garden (2013).

Viv Groskop, organizer of the event, calls the Woolf tour her “hidden gem.” The Woolf event will take place Monday, March 3, 1-2 p.m. in the Guildhall. Cost for the event is £7.50.

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The Reading Room in Dallas, Texas, is hosting an exhibition with a title taken from Virginia Woolf’s womanorialThe Modern Essay” (1925).

“never to be yourself and yet always – that is the problem” will be presented by the collective (wo)manorial through March 1.

The group exhibition addresses the endless doubts and beliefs, searches and frustrations, manipulations and attempts to be honest with art and with ourselves, questioning the freedom that gives pleasure but also uncertainty.

It is open on Saturdays and by appointment.

The Reading Room is a project space located at 3715 Parry Ave., Dallas dedicated to text and image.

 

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