On the 22nd June I am going to be chairing a rather fabulous panel with Laura Bates, founder of Everyday sexism and award winning writer Irenosen Okojie for Brighton Book Festival 2023.

We are going to be talking about feminism and dystopia.

We’ll be asking the panel, is our world now entering territory usually reserved for fictional dystopias? Or have dystopian novels always reflected real life events?

Brighton Book Festival 2023 is hosted by @afroribooks & @thefeministbookshop and you can get tickets here – so please join us 🙂

The mission of Afrori and Fem Book shop is to promote access to diverse literature, widen participation in cultural events and improve representation. They’ve put together an incredible line-up of speakers and events and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. 

More information on all the events and tickets are available @brightonbookfestival (www.brightonbookfestival.co.uk)

Look forward to seeing you there!

#brightonbookfestival #brighton #makingmarginalisedmainstream 

Line Up

Irenosen Okojie

Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British author whose work pushes the boundaries of form, language, and ideas.

Her novel Butterfly Fish, and short story collections, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch, have won and been nominated for multiple awards. Her journalism has been featured in The New York Times, The Observer, The Guardian and The Huffington Post. She is a Contributing Editor for The White Review. She co-presents the BBC’s Turn Up For The Books podcast alongside Simon Savidge and Bastille frontman, Dan Smith.

Her work has been optioned for the screen. She has also judged various literary prizes including the Dylan Thomas Prize, The Gordon Burn Prize as well as the BBC National Short Story Award. She is a judge for the 2023 Women’s Prize For Fiction. Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, she was awarded an MBE For Services to Literature in 2021.

Her latest novel, Curandera is being released in June 2023.

Curandera

Curandera explores the darker elements of shamanism, desire and friendship. In the mountainous town of Gethsemane, a mysterious woman’s arrival sparks a series of strange events that will leave the town’s inhabitants changed – men sporadically blind in the afternoons, children disappearing and reappearing without warning and infertile women pregnant with the memories of past births. In London, Therese, a botanist, is quietly on the hunt for a rare form of peyote.

Therese lives with three friends in a Victorian house, Azacca, a Haitian musician who leaves offerings, Peruvian drifter Emilien who is haunted by the past and adventurous Finn, who is increasingly drawn to living life on the edge. When Therese discovers she can heal the sick, jealousy and resentment fracture their bond.

Laura Bates

Laura Bates is the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, an ever-increasing collection of over 200,000 testimonies of gender inequality, with branches in over 20 countries worldwide. She works closely with politicians, police forces, businesses, schools and organisations from the United Nations to the Council of Europe to tackle sexism and sexual violence. Her campaigning and advocacy work has seen Facebook change its policies on sexual violence, helped British Transport Police to transform its approach to sexual assaults, increasing both reports and detection of offenders dramatically, and contributed to putting consent and healthy relationships on the national curriculum in the UK. 

She is Patron of Somerset and Avon Rape and Sexual Abuse Support and contributor at Women Under Siege, a New York-based organisation working to end rape as a weapon of war in conflict zones worldwide. She is a bestselling author of many books, including Everyday Sexism, Men Who Hate Women and Fix the System Not the Women. She is on the board of Equimundo, a global non-profit engaging and supporting men and boys to tackle gender inequality. She writes regularly for the New York Times, Guardian, Telegraph and others. Laura is an honorary fellow at St John’s College Cambridge and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She has been awarded a British Empire Medal by the Queen for her services to Gender Equality and named a Woman of the Year by Cosmopolitan, The Sunday Times Magazine and Red Magazine.

Helen Trevorrow

Helen Trevorrow is a writer based in Brighton & Hove. She is a graduate of the Faber Academy. Helen writes about women, work and ethics. Her first novel, In The Wake is a feminist crime thriller that explores sexuality, family and alcoholism. Her second novel, New Brighton is a speculative thriller set in a dystopian near-future. Both novels feature queer protagonists. Helen loves 1980s sci-fi movies and nice stationery. She lives in Hove with her wife, daughter and dog.

New Brighton

During a vicious storm, a battered ship runs aground on Brighton beach. While the city on the sea comes to a ghostly standstill, the unusual event triggers an epic journey for young waitress, Robyn Lockhart.

First, Robyn needs to find the ship’s mysterious cargo, but in doing so she discovers the truth about herself, her family, and the place she’s always called home. Nothing is as it seems.

Robyn begins to question not only who she is, but what she is truly capable of. Will the uncomfortable answers bring her closer to seeing the truth? As she starts to understand her true purpose, her power increases, but where will it take her?

The truth lies within her, she has to learn to trust it to save herself, and those she loves.