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In this episode, Karina speaks with Urmila Seshagiri about 'The Life of Violet,' a previously unpublished manuscript by Virginia Woolf that has just been released by Princeton University Press.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

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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. 

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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. 

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In this episode, Karina speaks with Professor Maggie Humm about her new book, 'The Bloomsbury Photographs.' They discuss the importance of photography to the Bloomsbury members, the cameras they used, and the role of photograph albums in the curation of their intimate, creative lives. 

http://www.maggiehumm.net/

 https://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2024/10/25/the-bloomsbury-photographs/

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Harriet Baker joins Karina to discuss her new book, 'Rural Hours: The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann.' Together they explore how rural living affected the work of these three innovative authors, and profoundly shaped their personal and political lives.

The book is available from Allen Lane publishers and all good bookshops.

https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sed/english/staff/phd/profiles/bakerh.html

https://www.waterstones.com/book/rural-hours/harriet-baker/9780241540510

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In the second part of our series on Woolf in Japan, Karina visits Etc bookshop, a feminist bookshop in Tokyo. There, she speaks to the bookshop's founder, Akiko Matsuo, who believes Woolf's work is inspiring a whole community of Japanese feminists. Karina also speaks to the novelist and translator Aoko Matsuda, who discusses what it means to 'think back through our mothers' if we are women. Her book 'Eko no Mori' is partly inspired by Mrs Dalloway.

You can find more about Etc books and Aoko Matsuda below:
https://www.instagram.com/etc.books_bookshop/

https://www.instagram.com/matsudaoko/

The episode was funded by The Daiwa Foundation. The translator and co-producer was Aki Katyama.

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In 1910 a young Virginia Woolf engaged in a prank now known as The Dreadnought Hoax. The episode, which involved her pretending to be an Abyssinian Prince and wearing blackface, has divided and embarrassed scholars of her work, many of whom prefer not to dwell on it.

Danell Jones, author of 'The Girl Prince: Virginia Woolf, Race, and The Dreadnaught Hoax' is the first researcher to deeply consider this moment in Woolf's biography while also engaging with the Black experience in Britain, including the stories of real princes to Caribbean writers and South African activists.

Karina asks Danell what really happened during the Hoax and what legacies it leaves.

The book can be purchased through multiple outlets including: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/the-girl-prince/

For a discount, use promo code  THEGIRLPRINCE25

https://danelljones.com/the-girl-prince-virginia-woolf-race-and-the-dreadnought-hoax/

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In this episode, Karina speaks with Mansfield expert Gerri Kimber about the author's infamous connection with Virginia Woolf. They discuss what they had in common, what they didn't, and whether she was really a member of the Bloomsbury Group.

Gerri is the founder of the Katherine Mansfield Society. She is the author of Katherine Mansfield: The Early Years (2016), Katherine Mansfield and the Art of the Short Story (2015), and Katherine Mansfield: The View from France (2008). She is the Series Editor of the 4-volume Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield (2012-16). 

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This is the first part of a mini-series on Woolf in Japan. In this episode, Karina is joined by Prof Aki Katyama, the Japanese translator of A Room of One's Own. Together they discuss the success of this text in Japan, and the importance of Woolf's feminist essay to contemporary Japanese gender politics. They speak with students at Dokkyo University in Soka, and with Ryoko Takeuchi, a publisher at Heibonsha Publishers in Tokyo.

The episode is funded by The Daiwa Foundation.

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

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