Virago News

This International Friendship Day we’re sharing all our favourite reads that centre pals, mates, buds and besties. From a manual from top podcasters on how to value your friendships, to a novel about one woman’s […]

  1   My mother was six months’ dead when I opened the trunk I found under her bed. I opened the trunk on the same day her headstone was laid. Rose, my daughter, accompanied […]

This August we will publish Attia Hosain’s compelling classic novel, Sunlight on a Broken Column, and her powerful collection of short stories, Phoenix Fled.  Attia Hosain (1913–1998) was born in Lucknow and educated at La Martiniere […]

WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY Have a candid, engaging conversation with your children about Climate Change this World Environment Day, with a little help from the Your Plant Needs You! Teaching Guide (prepared by Shapes for Schools). The teaching […]

  Who is your feminism for? Austin Channing Brown was named by parents who deliberately wanted people to presume their daughter was a white man when applying for jobs. Now a speaker and writer working […]

  In recognition of Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month, Virago Books will donate £1 for every item purchased via the Virago store this May to PaNDAS (registered charity number 1149485).   Leah Hazard, author of […]

  What can we learn from African women’s movements? If you knew about the women who fought a freedom war in 1914 Nigeria, would it alter your view of feminist history? Chibundu Onuzo, award-winning author […]

Barbara Pym (1913–1980) was born in Oswestry, Shrop shire. She was educated at Huyton College, Liverpool, and St Hilda’s College, Oxford, where she gained an Honours Degree in English Language and Literature. During the war […]

Reenmore The first impression of Great-Aunt Dymphna was that she was more like an enormous bird than a great- aunt. This was partly because she wore a black cape, which seemed to flap behind her […]

INTRODUCTION   ‘The world of books: romantic, idle, shiftless world so beautiful, so cheap compared with living’ – NANCY SPAIN   I never met Nancy Spain, and I’ve been worrying that we might not have […]

‘I have found that when you write a novel, a character never actually leaves you from that point on.’   MARILYNNE ROBINSON   Regarded as one of America’s most important, graceful and original writers, Marilynne […]

Return to Gilead one more time. In this fourth and final novel in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead series we learn more about Jack Boughton – the loved and grieved-over prodigal son. Set before Gilead, Home and Lila, just after World […]