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A celebration of Zelda Fitzgerald, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Rose Macaulay

Three modernist women

A celebration of Zelda Fitzgerald, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Rose Macaulay

Three modernist women

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This Women’s History Month, join Bristol Women’s Literature Festival and Handheld Press for a celebration of three modernist women writers: Zelda Fitzgerald, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Rose Macaulay.

All three writers pushed the boundaries with their writing, producing an extraordinary body of work that included novels, short stories and essays. But for too long, these women have been excluded from the canon – marginalised from our understanding of modernism due to marriage, mental health, sexuality, and social status.

“So much she loved the man, so close and closer she felt herself that he became distorted in her vision, like pressing her nose upon a mirror and gazing into her own eyes ... She felt herself very small and ecstatic.” – Zelda Fitzgerald

About this event

Bath-based publisher Handheld Press has reprinted Zelda Fitzgerald’s Save Me The Waltz, Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin, and Rose Macaulay’s What Not. For this special event, Handheld’s Director Kate Macdonald is joined by Macaulay’s biographer, author and Women’s Press editor Sarah LeFanu to discuss these women’s work, the process of republishing classics by women, and why these three writers deserve their place in modernist history. Following the discussion are readings from Save Me The Waltz, Kingdoms of Elfin, and What Not.

This is your chance to discover the words of these wonderful women – and if you are already familiar with their writing, to reconnect with your love of their work.