Please join us at Common Threads, the second international conference on Black and Asian British Women’s Writing on 21-23 July, University of Brighton. Following the inaugural conference of the Black British Women’s Writing Network (BBWWN) at the University of Brighton in 2014, this upcoming conference celebrates the fact that so many Black and Asian women writers have emerged in the last two decades and acknowledges the significant impact their writing has made on publishing and the media since 2015. Black and Asian women’s writing has transformed Britain’s cultural landscape and provoked urgent conversations about nation and identity, home and belonging. Their work challenges the control white, British canonical writers have asserted over what qualifies as literary, where meaning is located in literary culture, and whose voices are privileged.
The last couple of years have been particularly exciting for Black and Asian British women writers with Bernardine Evaristo winning the Booker Prize in 2019, the first Black British woman to do so, and several debut authors such as Reni Eddo-Lodge topping the UK’s fiction and nonfiction paperback charts in 2020-21, and receiving substantial attention and recognition. The recent publication of The Cambridge Companion to Black British and Asian Literature 1945 – 2010 (edited by Deirdre Osborne), and The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing (edited by Susheila Nasta and Mark Stein) bring together over 400 years of Black and Asian British writing. 2022 also marks the 21st anniversary of the landmark ‘Write Black, Write British’ conference at the Barbican (organised by Kadija George), and of the publication of the anthology Bittersweet: Contemporary Black Women’s Poetry.
Common Threads aims to celebrate this rich cultural heritage while at the same time exploring how Black and Asian British Women’s Writing enables us to re-imagine the nation otherwise in the context of the unsettling, hostile environment of post-Brexit Britain.
Keynote Speakers: Bernardine Evaristo, Sharon Duggal, Louisa Uchum Egbunike
Conference Registration (until 19 July 2022): https://shop.brighton.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/other-conferences-events/events/common-threads-black-and-asian-british-womens-writing
Conference fee: £125/£62 for 3 days (waged/unwaged, students, postgraduate researchers) or £50/£25 per day 22-23 July (waged/unwaged, students, postgraduate researchers) and £25/£12 per day 21 July.
Further conference information:
Conference Organisers: Professor Suzanne Scafe (Brighton), Dr. Sarah Lawson-Welsh (York St. John), Dr Kadija George (Brighton), Dr Vedrana Velickovic (Brighton) and Amanda Holiday (Brighton).
This conference is supported by the Centre for Spatial, Environmental and Cultural Politics (SECP), Humanities and Social Science Research and Knowledge Exchange Funding and Centre for Arts and Wellbeing, University of Brighton and New Writing South.
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