Since its creation in 2011 there have been three Literary Archive Events.
Newnhamite actresses Eleanor Bron, Olivia Williams, and Genevieve Gaunt, and academic Dr Sandeep Parmer read the works of our famous alumnae.
Dr Alex da Costa, Valerie Eliot Fellow and Director of Studies, delivering a reading.
Workshops and open-mic sessions offer students and recent graduates the opportunity to engage with other writers.
The Literary Archive Event brings together members of College members, visitors, alumna, with an interest in reading.
Jean Gooder, Fellow Emerita and retired Director of Studies in English, with alumna and writer Margaret Drabble.
Principal Dame Carol Black with actors Olivia Williams and Genevieve Gaunt.
The library has inspired generations of female students and writers and houses the works of our most famous alumnae.
Inspiration for the literary archive came from Virginia Woolf who, although not a student at Newnham, visited the College at the invitation of the Newnham Arts Society in 1928. The talk Woolf gave on women and fiction at Newnham, along with one given at Girton College, was to become ‘A Room of One’s Own’, a text which continues to inspire women writers today.
Some of Newnham’s earliest students, including the late-Victorian poet and novelist Amy Judith Levy, went on to become writers. Newnham has continued this tradition and the College has been home to some of the best female writers of the twentieth and twentieth-first century.
Writers today
Newnham writers publishing today include: novelists AS Byatt, Margaret Drabble, Salley Vickers, Ali Smith, Patricia Duncker, Sarah Dunant and Jenn Ashworth; poets Gillian Allnutt and Wendy Mulford; biographer Claire Tomalin; screenwriter Emma Thompson; children’s authors Mary Hoffman and Caroline Lawrence; publisher Nicola Beauman, and writers and broadcasters Germaine Greer, Lisa Jardine, Joan Bakewell and Julia Neuberger.
Events
February 2011 – Literary Archive Launch