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Bloomsbury Heritage monographs debut at Woolf & the City

Posted in 19th Annual Internatinal Conference on Virginia Woolf, books, Cecil Woolf Publishers, Leonard Woolf, tagged Bloomsbury Heritage Series, Brian Fagan, Cecil Woolf Publishers, Dr. Alison Smith, Dr. Donald Palmer, Drew Patrick Shannon, Emilie Crapoulet, Paula Maggio, Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf a Musical Life, Woolf and the City on Tuesday 26 May 2009| 1 Comment »

Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf

Two Bloomsbury Heritage monographs, including one of my own, will debut at Woolf and the City, the 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf — and a third is in progress.

Cecil Woolf Publishers of London is the publisher.

The monographs making their first appearance at the June 4 to 7 conference at Fordham University — and afterward — are:

Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf: Woolf on Weather in Her Essays, Her Diaries and Three of Her Novels by Paula Maggio, number 54 in the Bloomsbury Heritage series.
Virginia Woolf: A Musical Life by Emilie Crapoulet, number 50 in the series.
How Should One Read a Marriage? Private Writings, Public Readings, and Leonard and Virginia Woolf by Drew Patrick Shannon will be published later this year.

Virginia Woolf: A Musical Life

Reading the Skies saw its first incarnation as a paper written for a graduate class taught by geology professors Dr. Alison J. Smith and Dr. Donald F. Palmer in the Master of Liberal Studies program at Kent State University. The class, which focused on the impact of climate change from the time of the Little Ice Age to the present, required that we write a weather-related paper.

I was an English major, not a science major, as an undergraduate, so I immediately searched for a literary connection. I did not have far to look.

How Should One Read a Marriage?

One of our texts was Briane Fagan‘s The Little Ice Age: Prelude to Global Warming 1300-1850. In it, he describes the frost fairs held on the River Thames during the years of the Little Ice Age. In a flash, I thought of Woolf’s descriptions of Orlando and Sasha skating feverishly across the Thames in her 1928 novel Orlando.

From there, I was on the hunt for anything written about Woolf and weather. Amazingly enough, I found nothing. Thus began my own study and analysis.

In Reading the Skies, I explore Woolf’s characteristically English fascination with the vagaries of the nation’s weather and its effect on culture. I also discuss weather’s influence on Woolf and her writing, including her theories about the role weather could and should play in fiction. Finally, I discuss how she carried out her theories in three of her novels, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando.

I invite you to pick up a copy of Reading the Skies and Virginia Woolf: A Musical Life at the Woolf conference at Fordham for the special conference price of $9. They — along with other monographs in the Bloomsbury Heritage Series — will be available at Cecil Woolf’s book display near the registration table in the Lowenstein Plaza Lobby. Here is the full conference schedule.

Then stay tuned to Blogging Woolf for news about the publication of How Should One Read a Marriage? We will announce its availability here.

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Fun with Virginia on stage at Fordham

Posted in 19th Annual Internatinal Conference on Virginia Woolf, performance, recordings, tagged Princeton, Stephen Pelton Dance Theater, Woolf and the City on Thursday 14 May 2009| Leave a Comment »

Is Virginia Woolf fun? Most people don’t think of her that way, but she definitely had a fun, playful side.

That side will be center stage when the band Princeton and the Stephen Pelton Dance Theater combine to present “it was this: it was this:”, songs and dance inspired by the life and work of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, at this year’s 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf.

The performance, June 5 at 8 p.m., is being billed as “Southern California frolic meets Northern California serious in a one-night-only collaboration of song and dance.”

It will be held at Pope Auditorium, 113 W 60th St. on the Fordham University campus in New York City, and tickets are still available.

Princeton will perform all of the songs from their recent album titled “Bloomsbury.” Each song presents a musical portrait of a member of the Bloomsbury group, including Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes.

The band, comprised of twin brothers Jesse and Matt Kivel and Ben Usen, will be joined by eight additional musicians in recreating their frolicsome, exuberant take on the cast of Bloomsbury characters.

The Stephen Pelton Dance Theater, known for known its intimate theatricality and emotional intensity, may be familiar to audiences from previous Woolf conferences.

This year the company will perform several new works, including the premiere of “it was this: it was this:”, a choreographic study of Woolf’s punctuation. Using a single paragraph from To the Lighthouse, the company dances its way from the first word to the last, pausing briefly for every comma, parentheses and semicolon in between. The company also performs a revised version of “The Death of the Moth,” first seen at the Plymouth State Conference in 1997.

The artists will combine forces for the premiere of Lytton/Carrington, a portrait-in-miniature of this original love story.

“What is most interesting to me in this collaboration with Princeton, is how remarkably different our approaches to Woolf are,” Pelton writes.” I suspect that some of this may be attributable to the fact that we are from completely different generations—I am in my mid-forties, they in their early twenties. Their sweet, light-hearted and, at times, irreverent response to the material would have been unthinkable to me twenty years ago when I started to read Woolf and make dances inspired by her.

“Though they are always respectful, their songs embrace the playful spirit in Woolf’s work and in the lives of her colleagues; whereas I have tended to focus my response on the gravity of Woolf’s concerns. This contrast should make for a very fascinating evening in the theater.”

The performance will be part of Woolf and the City, the 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, held June 4 to 7 at Fordham.

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Woolf on $45 a day

Posted in 19th Annual Internatinal Conference on Virginia Woolf, tagged 19th International Conference on Virginia Woolf, common readers, New York City, Woolf and the City on Wednesday 22 April 2009| 1 Comment »

By now, many of us know about Woolf and the City, the 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf set for June 4 to 7 in New York City. But how many of us know that you can attend one day of the conference for just $45?

So if you are lucky enough to live in the New York City area, you love Woolf, and you can free yourself up for one fine day in June, consider spending that day with Woolf scholars and common readers from around the world at Woolf and the City.

You won’t regret it. We’re a friendly bunch. Promise.

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Register for Woolf and the City

Posted in 19th Annual Internatinal Conference on Virginia Woolf, tagged 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Anna Snaith, Berg Collection, Dr. Ruth Gruber, Jessica Berman, Kris Lundberg, Princeton, Rebecca Solnit, Stephen Pelton Dance Theater, Susan Sellers, Tamar Katz, Woolf and the City on Wednesday 1 April 2009| 1 Comment »

Registration for Woolf and the City, the 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf that will be held in New York City June 4 to 7, is now open, and conference organizers have planned some exciting events.

Some of the highlights, as posted so far, include:

Plenary speakers Tamar Katz of Brown College, Anna Snaith of King’s College, author Rebecca Solnit and Jessica Berman
A plenary panel with three who take inspiration from Woolf: Dr. Ruth Gruber, Susan Sellers and Kris Lundberg
A performance of the Stephen Pelton Dance Theater with music by Princeton
A visit to the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, which has more Woolf manuscripts and letters than any other institution, including those in England.
A staged reading of “Vita and Virginia” with Alison Fraser, which is a reprise of the well-received reading at the Grolier Club in the fall. Tickets are $15.

Early bird registration has been extended to April 20, and online registration is open until May 8. Click here to register and get answers to frequently asked questions.

And if you are looking for three graduate credits, consider taking the summer class taught by Anne Fernald during the week of the conference. It’s called “Woolf: Modern Women and the City.”

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Susan Sellers rethinks Vanessa and Virginia

Posted in 19th Annual Internatinal Conference on Virginia Woolf, books, Susan Sellers, Vanessa Bell, tagged Susan Sellers, Vanessa and Virginia, Woolf and the City on Tuesday 27 January 2009| 4 Comments »

Susan Sellers‘ new novel, Vanessa and Virginia, is said to provide a new angle on the relationship between Virginia Woolf and her elder sister Vanessa Bell because it is told from Vanessa’s pespective.

Although Sellers has published numerous non-fiction books as well as short stories, this is her first novel. It was published in the UK by two Ravens Press last June, and it will be published in the U.S. by Houghton Harcourt in May.

Sellers, who is professor of English and related literature at the University of St Andrews, is known as the co-editor of the Cambridge University Press editions of Virginia Woolf’s works. She is also a noted scholar on Hélène Cixous.

She will be at the Woolf and the City conference at Fordham University in June.

Get more insight into Vanessa and Virginia by reading this interview with Sellers on the Two Ravens blog or this one on Vulpes Libris.