In this episode Martin Nathan and Tabitha Potts interview Lead Curator Dr Eleanor Jackson and Julian Harrison, about the British Library's latest blockbuster exhibition, Medieval Women: In Their Own Words, where visitors will discover how the voices of medieval women still resonate across the centuries and speak powerfully to our world today.

We discuss famous historical figures such as Joan of Arc and Julian of Norwich as well as discovering forgotten women such as the the rebel Margaret Starr who joined in the Peasant's Revolt, Maria Moriana, a woman who argued that slavery was illegal in order to prevent herself being sold, and the mediaeval Welsh poet Gwerful Mechain who wrote a poem praising the vagina.

Medieval Women: In Their Own Words runs at the British Library from 25 October 2024 – 2 March 2025. The exhibition is supported by Joanna and Graham Barker and Unwin Charitable Trust.

Reading: Hafsa bint al-Hajj, translated by Yasmine Seale.

Music: Early Music New York, Frederick Renz, Director, which comes from "Music for Medieval Love; Early Music New York, Frederick Renz, Director; exCathedra Records, USA."

This episode was produced by Tabitha Potts

Tabitha Potts is a short story writer and novelist, recognised with an Honourable Mention in the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize. Her debut novel will be published by Rowan Prose Publishing in 2026.

Our second live recording of six writers reading their work in the intimate surroundings of the Colony Room Green bar. There will be occasional drink mixing and pouring, laughter and doors opening!

Listen to Lana Citron talk about food as an aphrodisiac, Sue Hubbard read her novel Three about food as a source of emotional renewal, Lindsay Gillespie read her story about ravenous mermaids enjoying a night out at a seaside resort, Dr Stuart Gillespie talking about the way capitalism and agribusiness has corrupted our global food supplies, Martin Nathan reading a short story about how food evokes memories and Tabitha Potts reading a speculative short story about alien sin eaters.

Content warning: Lana Citron's reading at the beginning of the podcast includes a description of animal abuse/cruelty from the writings of the Marquis de Sade which some listeners may find disturbing.

Lana Citron is a prize-winning author and scriptwriter with twenty years' professional writing experience. She has published five novels, two non-fiction books and numerous short stories, plays, poems, film scripts, articles and book. Extracts read today are from her book Edible Pleasures, a Textbook of Aphrodisiacs.

Sue Hubbard is an award-winning poet, novelist and art critic who is new to Story Radio. She has published five collections of poetry, Everything Begins with the Skin (Enitharmon), Ghost Station and The Forgetting and Remembering of Air (Salt), Swimming to Albania (Salmon Poetry) and Radium Dreams (Women's Art Collection, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge) in collaboration with the artist Eileen Cooper RA, and a series of poems, God's Little Artist (Seren).

Her novels include: Depth of Field, (Dewi Lewis), Girl in White (Cinnamon and Pushkin Press), Rainsongs, (Duckworth, Overlook Press US, Mercure de France and Yilin Press, China) and Flatlands (Pushkin Press and Mercure de France). Rothko's Red, her collection of short stories, was published by Salt. She is currently working on a fifth novel, provisionally titled Three, which she reads in this podcast.

Lindsay Gillespie was born in South Wales, and lives in the South Downs. In between she has been a graphic designer and illustrator, lived in New Delhi, Washington DC, France and taught English in Tokyo. In 2018-2019, she was enrolled in the Creative Writing Programme of New Writing South. She writes short and not-so-short stories and was a Costa 2021 Short Story Award finalist. A year later, she was a finalist for the Bridport Short Story Prize. Other short stories have been shortlisted in nine competitions in recent years including Fiction Factory, Exeter, Oxford Flash Fiction, Fiction Factory Flash, Rhys Davies, Frome, ChipLit, Edinburgh and Fish.

Our next reader is Dr Stuart Gillespie, a non-fiction writer who’s also new to Story Radio. He has four decades of experience in nutrition and development since his first position as nutrition coordinator in a rural development project in southern India in the early 80s. His book Food Fight tells the tale of how the food system we once relied upon for global nutrition has warped into the very thing making us sick. It will be published by Canongate in 2025.

Martin Nathan's short fiction and poetry have appeared in various journals. His novel A Place of Safety is published by Salt Publishing. His dramatic writing has been shortlisted for the Nick Darke Award and the Woodward International...

In 19th-century Sweden, Caesaria is kept in a doctor's mansion as a trophy: she is the first baby to be born alive from one of his c-sections.

In a Gothic ambience, Caesaria narrates in first person her experiences in the mansion and her encounters with its mysterious inhabitants and visitors. Does she know where she comes from? Where is her mother? Is there a world beyond these walls?

We interview Hanna Nordenhök about her Gothic tale, published for the first time in English by Heloise Press on the 24th October 2024. Inspired by a real-life nineteenth-century medical miracle, it explores issues - women's bodies and women's rights - that are vitally contemporary.

Our wide-ranging discussion covers some international writers and film-makers whose work listeners might not be familiar with so we thought we would list them here.

Authors

Ágota Kristóf - 1935 – 2011: Hungarian author

The Notebook Trilogy and The Illiterate are available in translation

Birgitta Trotzig 1929 – 1935: Swedish author

Her work seems currently only available in Swedish or translated into French or Spanish.

Fernanda Melchor (b.1982) Mexican: Paradais and Hurricane Season published by Fitzcarraldo

Films

The Wild Child - Francois Truffaut 1970

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser Hans Werber Herzog 1974

The Knick - Steven Soderbergh (TV series) 2014-15

Hanna Nordenhök (Malmo, 1977) has been awarded several major literary honors for her work, both as novelist, poet and essayist. Her novel Caesaria (2020) scooped Swedish Radio’s Literary Prize and was shortlisted for Vi’s Literature Prize. Nordenhök also works as a translator from the Spanish and has been praised for her translations of Fernanda Melchor, Andrea Abreu and Alia Trabucco Zerán. Her last novel Wonderland (2023) was listed among the Best Books of the Year in Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Expressen, Borås Tidning, Hufvudstadsbladet and Magasinet ETC, as well as shortlisted for Vi's Literature Prize.

Saskia Vogel is a writer and translator of over two-dozen Swedish-language books. Her novel Permission was published in five languages. She is a recipient the Berlin Senate grant for non- German literature, the Bernard Shaw Prize, two English PEN Translates Awards, and was a PEN America Translation Prize finalist. She was Princeton’s Fall 2022 Translator in Residence. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she lives in Berlin.

This episode was produced by Martin Nathan.

Martin Nathan’s short fiction and poetry has appeared in a range of journals and his novel – A Place of Safety is published by Salt Publishing. His dramatic writing has been shortlisted for the Nick Darke award and the Woodward International Prize.

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