Redefining Sylvia Plath with Connie Palmen
Bradford Literature Festival hosts an event on Syliva Plath. A New Plath Through The Darkness: Redefining Sylvia Plath, with Heather Clark, Connie Palmen and Lennie Goodings.
We know poet and novelist Sylvia Plath as one of the most celebrated voices in American literature and a figure bathed in tragedy – but what if these perceptions are wrong? It’s this idea that forms the backbone of two new texts, each presenting a fresh view of this iconic poet and author.
Connie Palmen’s Your Story, My Story breathes new life into Plath’s world by recounting a fictionalised portrayal of her love affair with fellow poet Ted Hughes. Meanwhile, Heather Clark’s biography Red Comet unearths new material that paints Plath as an unlikely figure of trailblazing hope.
With these exciting publications as our guide, join us for a digital discussion that sets out to redefine our perception of a literary legend.
This event will be available from 9am on Wednesday 30th June
- Wednesday, 30th June 2021 | 9:00 am
- On Demand
- Festival website
Heather Clark is the author of three books on twentieth-century poetry, most recently Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, which won the Biographers’ Club Slightly Foxed Award for Best First Biography and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the LA Times Book Prize in Biography. It was named a Book of the Year in several publications, including the Guardian and the Times (London). She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the University of Huddersfield.
Lennie Goodings is Chair of Virago Press. Her authors include, amongst many others, Sarah Waters, Maya Angelou, Eileen Atkins, Natasha Walter, Linda Grant and Marilynne Robinson. Her book, A Bite of the Apple: A Life with Books, Writers and Virago was published in 2020 by OUP. She won A Lifetime’s Achievement at WOW, London’s Southbank Women of the World festival in 2018.
About the author(s)
Connie Palmen (1955) is an author, philosopher and expert of Dutch literature and language. Her first novel De wetten (The Laws, 1991) became a bestseller and established her name as a writer. Her two subsequent novels De vriendschap (The Friendship, 1995) and I.M. (1998) followed her debut onto the bestsellers...
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