As a Northern writer, it’s exciting to see literary events happening in this part of the world and have the chance to meet other writers and poets channelling their location through their work.
From 20 to 22 September, the Brontë Festival of Women’s Writing will be taking place in the Yorkshire town of Haworth, organised by the Brontë Parsonage Museum. The literary sisters were pioneering women writers and the festival, now in its ninth year, follows in that same spirit.
It’s dedicated to showcasing women’s writing and the weekend is packed with events to inspire readers and writers alike, including sessions programmed by novelist Kit de Waal, shining a light on new voices.
Lauren Livesey, Audience Development Officer at the Brontë Parsonage Museum, answered a few questions about the festival and how the Brontë sisters are still influencing writers today.
The Brontë sisters have inspired many writers: do you see their fingerprints on any recent releases or particular themes and trends in publishing?
I think that the Brontës have such a strong connection with place and nature, both through their writing and through their biographies, so it’s been really interesting to see their “fingerprints” in a lot of the new nature writing that has appeared in the last few years. It’s almost impossible not to evoke the Brontës when writing about nature, particularly within the north of England. We’ve also welcomed writers recently who have been writing in the Gothic tradition who’ve named the Brontës as big influences, and we’ve certainly noticed that publishers will lean heavily into Brontë comparisons when marketing books – “the next Jane Eyre”, “a Bronte-esque mystery” or any mention of the word wuthering! With a book like Sara Collin’s The Confessions of Frannie Langton, you have a text that is written in a really strong Gothic tradition, but telling the stories and amplifying the voices not traditionally heard in Victorian literature, which is such an interesting inversion.
The landscape around Haworth had an impact on the Brontë sisters’ writing. Does it have an impact on the festival too?
I think it is, in some ways, part of the real charm of the festival experience. I’m lucky enough to have been brought up locally and to live and work in this landscape, and maybe even get a little blasé about it, but it is truly a beautiful space to spend time. For attendees, you have the chance to spend a weekend immersed in Haworth – visiting the Museum, attending Brontë-inspired talks and workshops, staying locally and strolling the cobbles of Main Street. While you can obviously just come along to one or two events, you also have the option of completely saturating yourself in the local area, and walking on the moors in between events. The event this year that most explicitly links the programme to the landscape is Clare Shaw’s poetry workshop, which will take place out of doors and draw inspiration directly from the landscape of Haworth, both built and natural. Looking a little more abstractly at how their surroundings shaped the Brontës, the fact that they grew up so far away from a metropolitan centre, and that they were deemed to be “moorish and wild and knotty as a root of heath”. They struggled to break through into the London-centric world of publishing 170 years ago, and for many writers that is still the case today. We wanted to mark that in our programme, and to feature writers like Clare Shaw, our Festival writer in residence, who describes herself as northern through and through.
Kit de Waal was involved in programming this year’s event. What made you ask her to be involved and how has she influenced the programme?
Kit has been doing some incredible work on amplifying the voices of working class writers, and, while she never asked to become the poster girl for working class writing/writers, she speaks so thoughtfully and truthfully about what it means to create within an environment that doesn’t necessarily work for you. If you aren’t from the south east, if you aren’t economically secure, if you don’t have friends within the industry, publishing can be a really hard world to break into, both for writers and for anyone who wants to work within it. The Brontës encountered the same barriers 170 years ago that so many people face today, and Kit has been an incredible person to guest programme a Festival filled with content relevant to and supportive of so many of those writers and readers. She suggested that we operate bursaries which covered the costs of travel, accommodation and caring responsibilities, so that the Festival could be financially accessible. She masterminded an event on the life of a book, From Page to Publication, which features writers, agents, publishers and more sharing their experiences and myth-busting some of the barriers that can make people feel that writing and publishing are not for them. She’s just been a joy to work with from the very first conversation.
Which issues do you think are currently at the forefront of women’s writing?
That’s an absolutely huge question! It’s one that probably has dozens of answers. What do we mean when we talk about women’s writing? Is it just writing by women, or can it include writing about women? Should we even be separating “women’s fiction” from fiction more generally? I think it is pretty clear that inequality exists within publishing in a number of ways – recent studies and white papers have shown that while women make up the majority of readers, and are the writers of a large proportion of the books published each year, they are not represented proportionally on shortlists for prizes, and their work is less likely to be reviewed than that of a male writer (and, if it is reviewed, it will most likely be by a man). A woman who writes a domestic narrative that involves a relationship may find that her work is viewed very differently, and categorised differently, from a male author that deals with the same subject matter. I think awareness of these issues is increasing, along with an awareness of the need to hear from as many different voices as we can, but I’m not sure that actual changes are following. I think that harnessing this growing awareness and using it to create tangible change is the next important step.
Since the festival began nine years ago, what changes have you seen in contemporary women’s writing?
It’s been great to see other festivals emerge and strengthen that are doing similar things. Primadonna Festival in Suffolk and Kerry Hudson’s Breakthrough Festival continue to show that there is a thirst for this kind of content. From my perspective, and that of our strand of literary programming, we run Contemporary Women’s Writing events throughout the year, not just in the Festival in September, because we want it to be a central part of what we do at the Brontë Society, culminating one day in a physical centre for Contemporary Women’s Writing up here in Haworth. We’ve moved towards programming more workshops, to support emerging and developing writers. Looking further afield, some of the work that smaller regional presses are doing is starting to get the profile and appreciation it really deserves – Bluemoose Books, a small press in Hebden Bridge, has committed to only publish women in 2020, which is an amazing commitment and something which might not be possible for a larger, London-based house.
What are your favourite books so far this year, particularly by debut authors?
I loved Common People, which is edited by Kit de Waal and is a collection of writing from established and emerging working-class writers. I loved Lucy Powrie’s debut, The Paper and Hearts Society – we’ve worked with Lucy at the Society for a couple of years now and seeing her debut come out has just been amazing. Queenie, by Candace Carty-Williams, is a phenomenal debut, and I can’t wait to read what she does next. Patience Agbabi was Brontë Society writer in residence last year and published Emily’s Papers, a new collection of Brontë-inspired poetry – I’ve loved Emily Brontë since I was young, and I work with her legacy every day, but Patience’s work made me look at Emily again, and in a totally new way. I was lucky enough to read an advance copy of Bone China by Laura Purcell, which was right up my street and really chilling. I loved Sara Collins’ The Confessions of Frannie Langton, and Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six, and Angie Thomas’s On the Come Up was one of those books I just had to drink down in pretty much a single sitting. Mother Ship by Francesca Segal was absolutely phenomenal. I loved Normal People by Sally Rooney, and Promising Young Women by Caroline O’Donoghue. (I’ll stop now …)
How do you think the Brontë sisters would fit into the current literary landscape?
Oh, I’d love to be able to see it and know for sure … I think Anne would be producing amazing, issues-inspired books, and would be an activist as well as an author. I think Charlotte would probably have been great on social media – she was painfully shy in person, but the online world would probably allow her a platform. She might have spent a lot more time on her juvenilia, and I can see her writing for both YA and adult audiences. Emily probably wouldn’t have much time for social media, although I can see her as a strong part of the spoken word scene, for sure. I would also hope, that in a modern “re-do” of the Brontës, their elder sisters Maria and Elizabeth would survive to adulthood, and we’d have two additional Brontë sisters’ work to fall in love with. They’d also all live a lot longer and (hopefully) get to be very prolific!
To find out more about the festival or book for an event, visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum website.