Elif Shafak gave the annual “Room of One’s Own” lecture at this year’s spring Cambridge Literary Festival on the topic of  “Virginia Woolf’s Politics of Peace.”

The lecture, the festival’s second, provides an opportunity for England’s foremost women writers to contemplate how far we have come since Virginia Woolf said “lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

Shafak is a writer, public speaker, political scientist and activist. is an advocate for women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of expression. Her work includes the novels Three Daughters of Eve (2016) and 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World (2019).

You can watch the full version of her lecture in the festival’s CLF Player. It was filmed in April 2024 at the festival.

You can also read her lecture, titled “Virginia Woolf’s Politics of Peace,” in The New Statesman.