The Right to Roam: Women and Free Expression with Margie Orford and Kerri ní Dochartaigh

On International Women’s Day 2021 English PEN held a very special Members’ Event discussing the intersections of space and thought, and how various frontiers – physical, geographical, linguistic – impact on women’s freedom of expression. Irish writer and author of Thin Places Kerri ní Dochartaigh joined Margie Orford, former President of PEN South Africa and co-author of the PEN International Women’s Manifesto, and English PEN's Events and Partnerships Manager Hannah Trevarthen for a far-reaching discussion about the un-disappearing of women writers, trauma, listening, Antigone, kinship, and the quiet authority of women’s voices.
We're very pleased to be able to share the first part of this discussion here. A reading list of all the texts mentioned across the course of the discussion can be found below.
Hannah mentioned:
The PEN International Women’s Manifesto
Thin Places, by Kerri ní Dochartaigh
Margie Orford’s Claire Hart novels
‘Harmflesh’, an extract from Margie’s upcoming memoir published in Granta
Margie’s doctoral essay ‘Nostalgia for the Future’, which critically reassesses theories of trauma in relation to the postcolonial in the context of South Africa
Mariama Bâ (the quote 'books knit generations together in the same continuing effort that leads to progress' comes from So Long a Letter)
Katherine Amy Dawson Scott, founder of English PEN and the PEN movement worldwide
Margie mentioned:
Virginia Woolf
'Women Writing Africa' anthologies from The Feminist Press
Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn: 'Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide'
Elif Shafak
Tsitsi Dangarembga: 'Nervous Conditions' (title taken from Sartre's
preface to Franz Fanon's 'Wretched of the Earth'), 'The Book of Not', 'This Mournable Body'
Truth and Reconciliation Commission, South Africa
Antigone
Judith Butler: 'Antigone’s Claim'
Maaza Mengiste: 'The Shadow King'
Tove Ditlevsen: 'The Faces'
Dorthe Nors
Assia Djebar
Buchi Emecheta
Anna Burns: 'Milkman'
Kerri mentioned:
Amy Liptrot, author of PEN Ackerley Prize-winning memoir 'The Outrun'
Lauret Savoy
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Doireann Ní Ghríofa: 'A Ghost in the Throat'
Sinéad Gleeson
Caelainn Hogan: 'Republic of Shame'
Annemarie Ní Churreáin
Elaine Feeney
Rebecca Tamás: ‘Strangers: Essays on the Human and Nonhuman'
Nina Mingya Powles: 'Small Bodies of Water'
Emilie Pine
Jan Carson

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