The Virginia Woolf Podcast

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Anne E. Fernald is Professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Fordham University. She is the author of Virginia Woolf: Feminism and the Reader (2006) and is the editor of the Cambridge University Press Mrs. Dalloway (2014) the Norton Critical Edition of Mrs. Dalloway (2021), and the Oxford Handbook of Virginia Woolf (2021). 

This episode focuses on her most recent book, Her Own Voice, a study of eight women writers who broke with tradition. 

To learn more about Literature Cambridge, go to https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk or follow them on:

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In this special episode, Karina heads out to St Ives, Cornwall to see the view of Godrevy lighthouse from Talland House for the first time. This famous landmark features in Woolf's novel, To the Lighthouse, and people come from all over the world in order to see it, but sadly the view is set to be destroyed by a new block of flats that is now in the process of being built. 

Karina speaks with the gardener at Talland House, Polly Carter, who has been organising events to commemorate the view before it goes. Professor Alexandra Harris also lends her brilliant perspective on the issue as one of Britain's best known Woolf academics. 

Learn more about the events at Talland House at:

https://tallandhouse.com/ 

Translation and voice acting for this episode was provided by Melodie Golton. 

To learn more about Literature Cambridge, go to https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk or follow them on:

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The first film adaptation of Woolf's 1919 novel, Night and Day has just been released with a glittering cast including Jack Whitehall, Sally Phillips, Lily Allen, and Timothy Spall. 

Karina discusses the film with its director, Tina Gharavi, and they touch on the politics of period dramas and the gender disparity that still exists in the filmmaking industry. 

To learn more about Literature Cambridge, go to https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk or follow them on:

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A new stage adaptation of The Waves has just premiered at the Jermyn St theatre to sell-out shows. In this episode, Karina interviews the scriptwriter, Flora Wilson Brown, and director, Júlia Levai

To purchase the script, head to https://www.nickhernbooks.co.uk/the-waves

Flora Wilson Brown is a writer and dramaturg. Her first play I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW, about friendship and abusive relationships, premiered at the Southwark Playhouse in 2022 to critical acclaim. Her second play THE BEAUTIFUL FUTURE IS COMING, which explores existential questions about the climate crisis across time through three women and their relationships, had a critically acclaimed run on the Bristol Old Vic’s main stage in summer 2025 before transferring to the Traverse for the Edinburgh Festival 2025 in a production directed by Nancy Medina. She is on attachment to the National Theatre and under commission to the Globe Theatre, and in screen is writing an episode for an anthology series about Gen Z for Hat Trick.

Júlia Levai is a theatre director & dramaturg from Budapest based in London. She recently directed the critically acclaimed premiere of Nancy Netherwood’s new play, Radiant Boy at Southwark Playhouse. Her production of Petty Men (after Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar) won the European Shakespeare Festival Network’s 2026 Award and will be touring across Europe in 2026.

Júlia regularly works at the National Theatre as Staff Director (Land of the Living, Coriolanus, Dear Octopus), Script Reader and Mentor Director for NT Connections. In 2024, she trained on the NT Studio’s Directors Course.

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This podcast is all about the wonderful Jane Harrison, the inimitable classicist who was a significant influence on Virginia Woolf. 

To discuss Jane's life and legacy we have Ann Kennedy Smith. Ann is a writer, researcher, and literary critic. Her essays and reviews have been published in the Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Slightly Foxed magazine, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Journal of Victorian Culture, English Review and History Today. She has given lectures for Cambridge University Library, Literature Cambridge (with Dr Trudi Tate) and Cambridge alumni associations, and in January 2023 she was a guest on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Freethinking’ programme, talking about women in higher education. She is currently working on a book about the Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society 1890-1914. She is a member of Clare Hall Art Committee.

You can access her excellent substack, 'The Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society' through the following link:

https://akennedysmith.substack.com/?utm_source=global-search

To learn more about Literature Cambridge, go to https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk or follow them on:

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Frances Spalding discusses her thoughts on Bloomsbury, a meeting with Duncan Grant, and the wonderful Stevie Smith. 

To learn more about Literature Cambridge, go to https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk or follow them on:

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In this episode, Karina speaks with Urmila Seshagiri about 'The Life of Violet,' a previously unpublished manuscript by Virginia Woolf that has just been released by Princeton University Press. Urmila is Distinguished Professor in Humanities and Professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is the author of Race and the Modernist Imagination (Cornell UP), and is the editor of Virginia Woolf’s The Life of Violet (Princeton UP), Jacob’s Room (Oxford UP), and To the Lighthouse (W. W. Norton; in preparation), and she is preparing the first scholarly edition of Woolf’s memoir, A Sketch of the Past

To learn more about Literature Cambridge, go to https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk or follow them on:

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This is episode is all about writers' rooms - where do writers really work, and why are we so invested in the romance of the writing process? Academic and author, Katie da Cunha Lewin has thought a great deal about this subject, and her recent book 'The Writer's Room' explores it in depth. In this episode, Karina chats to Katie about the politics and practicalities of authorship, and (of course) about Virginia Woolf's own writing process. 

To learn more about Literature Cambridge, go to https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk or follow them on:

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Our previous episode on Katherine Mansfield was so successful that we've prepared this sequel entirely dedicated to her life and work. In this episode, Karina speaks with Dr Gerri Kimber about her new biography, 'Katherine Mansfield: A Hidden Life,' an incredibly rich examination of the wild and dangerous legacy left  by one of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Woolf said that Mansfield was the only writer she was jealous of, and in many ways it's easy to see why.  

The book is available from Reaction from Nov 1st 2025. You can see Gerri speak at the Oxford Literary Festival and at Hatchard's Piccadilly, and follow her on instagram at @gerri_kimber

https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/katherine-mansfield

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It is officially 100yrs since the publication of Mrs Dalloway. To celebrate, we have just released a podcast episode with Prof Mark Hussey on his new 'biography' of the novel. In the course of this interview we discussed the evolution of Mrs Dalloway, Woolf's various sources of inspiration, and the novel's many afterlives.  We also talked about how re-reading the novel across a lifetime grants it a new kind of biography, an autobiography mapped on to our own lives and experiences. 

To learn more about Literature Cambridge, go to https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk or follow them on:

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