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The sudden change to human life as a result of the current pandemic has yet to be understood, and it will no doubt take years to comprehend its impact upon the human subject. Women in particular may have been impacted more severely as a result of increased workloads and adjustments to working from home due to lockdown. Both creative and academic women writers may be particularly well-placed to capture the impact of the experience of Covid on the human psyche and on quotidian experience. There are manifold avenues to explore, and this workshop aims to do so through facilitating an exchange of experiences and ideas.  Contributors include writers and academics from the UK and around the globe.

Programme [PDF]


Participation in the workshop is free and open to anyone interested. Advance booking is essential. Booking closes 29 April 2021. 

Participants are expected to have read the presentations prior to the event; please click on the links provided below to access the presentations:

10.00 – 11.00: Panel 1: Capacity to Work/Publish/Create (Chair: Caragh Wells, Bristol)

Catherine Davies (Leeds): How Far Did the UK Spring 2020 Lockdown Exacerbate Gender-based Research Inequalities?

Rebecca Clode, Alice Grundy, Melinda Harvey and Julieanne Lamond (Australian National University): What Happens to Women’s Voices during a Pandemic? A Quantitative Study of the Impact of COVID-19 on Women Writers in Australia

Artist Collective PartSuspended (London): Collaborative Writing on SPIRALS during the Covid-19 Lockdown

11.00 – 11.20: Break

11.20 – 12.30: Panel 2: Personal Testimony / Creative Contribution (Chair: Godela Weiss-Sussex, IMLR)

Maria V. Luna-Thomas (London):  The Chiaroscuro Effect of Relentless Parenting during Lockdown 

Sonka Hecker (Berlin): Am I Still Me?

Janet Newman (Open University): Lost for Words

Isabel Cristina Mateus (University of Minho) Rear Window (Chronicles of Lockdown) 

Gail Chester (London): ‘Operational Challenges’: or, Managing to Get Any Writing Done, Whether it’s Covid19 or Not

12.30 – 14.00: Break

14.00 – 15.00: Panel 3: Studying Women Writers (Chair: Adalgisa Giorgio, Bath)

Daria Kozhanova (Bologna): Italian Women Writers and Pandemic: New Voices of Empowerment

Ellen Patat (Milan): Di Terra e di Misterio by Tuti: Place and Identity at Times of Covid

Louyzza Vasquez (University of the Philippines): Poetry and the Pandemic: How Filipina Writers Persist

15.00-15.20: Break

15.20-16.20: Panel 4: Translation (Chair: Emily Jeremiah, Royal Holloway, London)

Muireann Maguire (Exeter): From the Novel Coronavirus to the Coronavirus Novel – a Translator’s Perspective

Clare Nimmo (Universidad Pontificia Comillas de Madrid): The Masked Translator: Layering in Theatre and Media during the Pandemic

Éva Cserháti (Shrewsbury): Who Killed the Matryoshka Doll? Self-Translation as Self-Harm



Workshop Organisers: Caragh Wells (Bristol) and Godela Weiss-Sussex (IMLR) 

This event is organised under the auspices of the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing at the IMLR