Posted in 19th Annual Internatinal Conference on Virginia Woolf, Bloomsbury, music, MySpace, tagged Princeton, Woolf and the City on Wednesday 1 July 2009| Leave a Comment »
Princeton
Get more insight about members of Princeton, the young band that rocked the house with its Bloomsbury tunes at Woolf and the City.
Read the group’s latest interview with the San Diego CityBeat, visit them on MySpace or follow them on Twitter.
Posted in 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Cecil Woolf, Cecil Woolf Publishers, tagged Cecil Woolf, The Rumpus, Woolf and the City on Wednesday 17 June 2009| 9 Comments »
Cecil Woolf
In a former life, I was a journalist. In another former life, I was a public relations and marketing person. So a week or two before Woolf and the City, I started thinking like both again.
Here’s why. I knew Cecil Woolf was coming to the conference. I knew the conference was in New York City. I knew New York City is full of media.
So I thought, “What journalist who covers the literary beat wouldn’t want to interview the nephew of Leonard and Virginia Woolf who is also an independent publisher?” None, I thought.
As it turns out though, either I was wrong or the current economic downturn has affected New York media more than I imagined. Only one media outlet, The Rumpus, responded to my pitch.
But respond they did, and this week the online magazine posted a fascinating interview with Cecil, as well as a first-person account of the conference. Both are written by Sasha Graybosch.
Thanks to conference organizer Anne Fernald and her intern Megan Branch for putting me in touch with The Rumpus. And thanks to Rumpus editor Rozalia Jovanovic for recognizing a good story when she sees one.
Here is a different view of Cecil on the Lux Lotus blog.
Posted in 19th Annual Internatinal Conference on Virginia Woolf, commodification, music, recordings, tagged 19th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Princeton, Virginia Woolf t-shirt, Woolf and the City on Wednesday 10 June 2009| 2 Comments »
Another big hit was the Virginia Woolf t-shirt the band sold. It featured Virginia looking trés cool behind a pair of metallic-gold-trimmed Ray-Bans.
You, too, can be trés cool. Order a shirt from the band’s MySpace page. Scroll way down. Choose your size — men’s or women’s from small to large — and click on the “Pay Now” link to pay through PayPal.
Tip: The shirts are 100 percent cotton, and the women’s sizes run small. Bump your order up a size.
While you are on their site, you can check out their music.
Posted in 19th Annual Internatinal Conference on Virginia Woolf, books, Cecil Woolf, Cecil Woolf Publishers, Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, tagged Bloomsbury Heritage Series, books, Cecil Woolf, Cecil Woolf Publishers, Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf, Woolf and the City on Tuesday 2 June 2009| 4 Comments »
And that’s not just because he is my publisher. It’s actually because he is such a dear — and the nephew of Leonard and Virginia Woolf to boot.
I met Cecil Woolf at the 17th Annual International Conference on Woolf, which was held in 2007 at Miami University of Ohio, within driving distance of my Northeast Ohio home.
It was my first Woolf conference, and I felt slightly intimidated — despite my advanced age — as I stood by myself at the opening reception. There I was, surrounded by the brilliant Woolf scholars whose books were my friends, even though the writers themselves were complete strangers to me.
Drew Patrick Shannon, a young Woolf scholar from the Cincinnati area, sort of took me under his wing that evening. He and his friends were funny and bright, and they seemed to know everyone. One person they knew — and pointed out to me — was Cecil Woolf.
The next day, while browsing the book tables, I lingered at the one covered with artfully decorated softcover volumes published by Cecil Woolf Publishers. It was staffed by Cecil himself, and our conversation lasted right through the next conference session.
One conversation led to another, and by the time I drove home from Oxford, I had agreed to write a monograph for Cecil on Woolf and weather, a topic I had been researching and musing about for six years.
Drew, who congratulated me that day but wondered aloud what idea he could pitch to Cecil, is now writing How Should One Read a Marriage? Private Writings, Public Readings, and Leonard and Virginia Woolf. It will be published in Cecil’s Bloomsbury Heritage Series later this year.
So if you are on the fence about attending the conference, get off the fence and into the city. Even if you have to beg, borrow or steal the $45 for a one-day pass.
Besides all of the fabulous sessions on the conference schedule, believe this: You won’t want to pass up the opportunity to meet Cecil Woolf. You never know what may come of it.
Stop by the opening reception for the conference, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. June 4, where I will be signing copies of my monograph, Reading the Skies in Virginia Woolf: Woolf on Weather in Her Essays, Her Diaries and Three of Her Novels. Cecil will be there too.
The signing will be held in Fordham University’s Lowenstein Plaza Lobby, 113 W. 60th St. in New York’s Lincoln Center.
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:
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.
