Blogging Woolf

Virginia Woolf in Manhattan now in Turkish

Monday 15 June 2026 by Paula Maggio

We will have two bits of news from Turkey for you this week — just in time for the 35th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Woolf and Sound, which will be held June 24-28 in Istanbul.

Here is the first news item. The second will be posted later this week, so stay tuned.

Maggie Gee’s Virginia Woolf in Manhattan has now been published in Turkish by Eriken Yayınları, under the title Virginia Woolf Manhattan’da.

Translated by Prof. Dr. Mine Özyurt Kılıç, the novel brings together London, New York and Istanbul through a playful literary dialogue with Virginia Woolf’s works, from Mrs Dalloway and Orlando to A Room of One’s Own and The Waves.

The cover design, created by artist Elif Okur Tolun, also nods to Vanessa Bell’s legacy, gently recalling her contribution to the visual world of Woolf’s books—as Woolf’s sister and a key figure in the Bloomsbury circle, Bell famously decorated many of the early Hogarth Press editions of Woolf’s works with her own artwork, helping to shape their distinctive visual identity.

Posted in books, Virginia Woolf | Tagged 35th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Woolf and Sound, Maggie Gee, Mine Özyurt Kılıç, Turkey, Virginia Woolf in Manhattan | Leave a Comment »

Call for papers out now for 36th Annual International Woolf Conference: Between the Arts, June 16-20 in Oslo, Norway

Friday 5 June 2026 by Paula Maggio

The call for papers and works is out now for the 36th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf: Between the Arts, which will be held June 16-20, 2027, at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts and the University of Oslo in Oslo, Norway. The deadline for submissions is Oct. 15.

Presentation options

Contributions from across the fields of academic and artistic research that emphasize artistic expression, and draws on the inspiration of the Bloomsbury group are welcome. The conference will investigate how the various arts and the senses interact with one another and is looking for contributions that combine artistic and academic approaches.

Twenty-minute individual presentations, panels, roundtables, workshops and creative works are welcome.

Submissions and more information

The deadline for submissions is Oct. 15. Submissions should be emailed to woolf2027@khio.no.

See more details in the JPEG below, which you download and enlarge for better readability here. As conference planning progresses, more information will be posted on the conference website at https://khio.no/events/2417

Posted in 36th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, events, Virginia Woolf | Tagged 36th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Between the Arts, Norway, Oslo | 2 Comments »

Five Woolf novels among The Guardian’s 100 best

Thursday 4 June 2026 by Paula Maggio

The Guardian newspaper asked 170 novelists, critics and academics for their top 10 works of fiction, ranked in order. Five of the 100 were novels by Virginia Woolf.

Woolf scholar Vara Neverow shared this information via the VWoolf Listserv, and Emilia Castellucci, membership secretary for the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, passed it on to members.

Here are Woolf’s five novels that made The Guardian list:

Jacob’s Room (#90 of 100)
The Waves (55)
Orlando (54)
Mrs Dalloway (14) and
To the Lighthouse (4).

Comparison to previous poll years

The Guardian ran similar polls in 2003 and 2015, and here is what has changed.

More female writers made the list. Thirty-six out of 100 this year, compared with 21 in 2015 and a paltry 16 in 2003
Of women writers, only Jane Austen’s Emma and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein made the top 10 of both previous lists. This year, Emma was number 13 and Frankenstein number 30.

Which novel made the top of the list this year? It is Middlemarch by George Eliot, one of Woolf’s favorites. Of it, she said:

the magnificent book […] with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people’

Stephen King, David Nicholls, Bernardine Evaristo, Salman Rushdie, Anne Enright, Yiyun Li, Elif Shafak, Ian McEwan, Maggie O’Farrell, Colm Tóibín, Lorrie Moore and Katherine Rundell were among those polled. All were asked for their top 10, ranked in order. Any book published in English, but originally written in any language, was eligible.

Posted in books | Tagged 100 best novels 2026, The Guardian | Leave a Comment »

Mrs. Dalloway, renamed Clarissa, moves to Nigeria

Sunday 24 May 2026 by Paula Maggio

Clarissa, a film adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs Dalloway, was featured at the Cannes film festival and is expected to be released in the U.S. later this year.

The film transposes the story from London to a modern Nigeria. The Guardian’s film reviewer gives it four stars and describes it as:

a seductively mysterious, languorous, melancholy drama with commanding performances and a great musical score […] set partly in modern-day Lagos, whose ambient streetscapes are conjured up with style, and partly in the more bucolic Abraka in southern Nigeria, 30 years in the past.

Starring Sophie Okonedo as an older Clarissa and David Oyelowo as an older Peter, the film premiered in Cannes earlier this month. Nigerian film-making brothers Arie and Chuko Esiri directed the film.

Posted in films, Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf | Tagged Cannes Film Festival, Clarissa, Film, Mrs. Dalloway, Nigeria, premiere | Leave a Comment »

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.