James Kearns will give the International Virginia Woolf Society’s Annual Lecture on Thursday, Dec. 4, via Zoom.
His talk, “How a ‘Manifesto’ Unfolds: Microgenesis, ‘Modern Novels,’ and the Missing Authoress,” will be followed by a general discussion.
Topic: 2025 IVWS Annual Lecture by James Kearns: “How a ‘Manifesto’ Unfolds: Microgenesis, ‘Modern Novels,’ and the Missing Authoress” Date: Dec. 4 Time: 9 a.m.-10:30 a.m. Mountain Time (US and Canada), 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. EST, and 4-5:30 p.m. GMT
Members have received the Zoom link for the lecture via email. To join the society, visit their website.
Undergraduates currently writing about Virginia Woolf are urged to enter the 2024 Angelica Garnett Undergraduate Essay Contest, sponsored by the International Virginia Woolf Society.
Submission guidelines
Undergraduate essays can be on any topic pertaining to the writings of Virginia Woolf.
Essays should be between 2,000 and 2,500 words in length, including notes and works cited, with an original title of the entrant’s choosing.
Essays will be judged by the Society’s officers.
Submissions are due at the end of June.
There is a cash prize of $400 for first place, in addition to a promise of publication in an upcoming issue of the Virginia Woolf Miscellany.
This is an excellent opportunity for the brightest young Woolfians out there today.
How to submit
To submit an essay, please fill out the entry form and then send your essay to society president Ben Leubner at leubnerb@montana.edu.
Save Friday, April 28, at 3 p.m. ET for the Woolf Salon Project No. 24: On Wonder.
Organizers from the International Virginia Woolf Society say, “Grab your favorite unicorn horn, your box of grubs, your strange silks and seabeasts, your astrolabe and ambergris, your magic glasses full of emerald light and blue mystery as we join guest hosts Angela Harris and Eret Talviste for a discussion of two Woolf essays, “The Elizabethan Lumber Room” (1925) and “Sir Thomas Browne” (1923).”
Where to find the readings
“The Elizabethan Lumber Room” appears in the First Common Reader and is available online.You can also find it in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 4: 1925-1928, pp. 53–61.
“Sir Thomas Browne”—originally published in the Times Literary Supplement —appears in The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 3: 1919-1924, on pp. 368–72. It is also available via Dropbox.
Check your time zone
Time Zone conversions:
12 p.m. PT (Los Angeles)
3 p.m. ET (New York)
4 p.m. Brasilia
8 p.m. BST (London)
9 p.m. CEST (Paris)
5 a.m. AEST Saturday 4/29 (Sydney)
Salons typically run about two hours, and the event will be recorded for later viewing for members of the International Virginia Woolf Society.
How to join
Anyone can join the group, which usually meets on one Friday of each month via Zoom and focuses on a single topic or text. Just contact woolfsalonproject@gmail.com to sign up for the email list and receive the Zoom link.
The Salon Conspirators — Benjamin Hagen, Shilo McGiff, Amy Smith, and Drew Shannon — began the Woolf Salon Project in July 2020 to provide opportunities for conversation and conviviality among Woolf-interested scholars, students, and common readers during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
If you are an undergraduate with an interest in Virginia Woolf’s work, consider entering the International Virginia Woolf Society’s annual undergraduate essay competition. Winner of the 2022 Angelica Garnett Undergraduate Essay Prize will receive a cash prize and their essay will be published in the society’s newsletter.
The essay competition is held annually in honor of Virginia Woolf and in memory of Angelica Garnett, writer, artist, and daughter of Woolf’s sister, Vanessa Bell.
Essay requirements
Undergraduate essays can be on any topic pertaining to the Woolf’s writing.
Essays should be between 2,000 and 2,500 words, including notes and works cited, with an original title of the entrant’s choosing.
Essays will be judged by the society’s officers: Benjamin Hagen, president; Amanda Golden, vice-president; Susan Wegener, secretary-treasurer); and Catherine Hollis, historian-bibliographer.
The latest installment, Issue 98, is now online. It features the special topic “The First Thirty Annual (International) Conferences on Virginia Woolf,” edited by AnneMarie Bantzinger.
The collection, solicited in 2019, offers a collage of reminiscences and memories that evoke the conference experiences from multiple perspectives, those of organizers and participants.
Among them is one I wrote about the 2009 conference in New York City. I’m sharing it here.
Woolf and the City: Wow!
For a girl born in Brooklyn, transplanted to Ohio at the age of three, and engaged in a longtime love affair with both Virginia Woolf and New York, could there be anything better than a Woolf conference in New York City? I think not.
Conference organizer Anne Fernald and Megan Branch, Fordham student, at Woolf and the City
And that is why “Wow!” was my immediate reaction to Woolf and the City, the 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. Ten years later that is still my emotional response when I think of that 2009 event, which is why I chose the New York City conference as my personal hands-down favorite among the ten Woolf conferences I have attended.
Held June 4-7 at Fordham University on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and organized by Anne Fernald, the conference was the second I had attended. But it was the first one I wrote about on Blogging Woolf, the site I created in July of 2007. Now, those blog posts, including one aptly titled “In the aftermath of Woolf and the City, one word — Wow!” help me recall the high points of the conference I described as “dynamite.”
Notable scholars, authors, readers
It featured 50 panels, attracted 200 Woolf scholars and common readers from around the globe, and introduced me to notable authors I never dreamed I would meet.
Ruth Gruber at Woolf and the City
One was Dr. Ruth Gruber, who died in 2016. Ninety-seven at the time of the conference, she was known as a journalist, photographer, and the author of Virginia Woolf: The Will to Create as a Woman (1935).
She shared fascinating stories of her 1930s experiences as a journalist who visited the Soviet Arctic and a writer who met Virginia and Leonard Woolf in their Tavistock Square flat.
I remember chatting with this redhead curbside as she patiently waited for the cab that would take her home.
Novel writer and keynote speakers
Susan Sellers
Another was Susan Sellers, author of Vanessa and Virginia, the novel based on the relationship between sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, which was receiving rave reviews in the US at the time. I recall her graciousness as she signed books and chatted with readers.
Others I listened to, but did not meet, included keynote speaker Rebecca Solnit, a prolific author whose work is so timely and compelling today, and Tamar Katz of Brown University who spoke about the importance of “pausing and waiting” in life and in Woolf.
From a walking stick to rock music
What else struck my fancy? Here’s the list:
A visit to the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, where we were treated to a private viewing of pieces in the Virginia Woolf collection, including the walking stick rescued from the River Ouse after her death. Being there felt more sacred than church.
A performance of the 2004 play Vita and Virginia, written by Dame Eileen Atkins and directed by Matthew Maguire, director of Fordham’s theatre program.
A performance that combined rock-out music from an L.A. band called Princeton with dance from the Stephen Pelton Dance Theatre as the group performed cuts from its four-song album “Bloomsbury” based on the lives of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, and Lytton Strachey.
