This event will be live streamed on the British Library platform and available to watch live or within 48 hours on catch up. Viewing links will be sent out shortly before the event.

In Lauren Groff’s acc novel Matrix, seventeen-year-old Marie de France is cast out of the royal court by Eleanor of Aquitaine and sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey, only to find its nuns on the brink of starvation and beset by disease.

At first taken aback by the severity of her new life, Marie steadily supplants her desire for family, for her homeland, for the passions of her youth with something new to her: devotion to her sisters, and a conviction in her own divine visions.

Lauren Groff’s novel Matrix is a defiant exploration of the raw power of female creativity in a corrupted world. She is joined in online conversation by best-selling historical novelist Stephanie Merritt, aka S.J. Parris.

This event accompanies the British Library exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words (25 October – 2 March 2025). Separate ticket for exhibition entry required.  Explore the Medieval Women events series here.

This is an online only event streamed on the British Library platform. Bookers will be sent a viewing link shortly before the event and will be able to watch at any time for 48 hours after the start time.

Half price tickets available for Members, Students, Under 26 and other concession groups.

Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and The New York Times–bestselling author of the novels The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia, Fates and Furies, Matrix, and The Vaster Wilds, and the celebrated short story collections Delicate Edible Birds and Florida. She has won The Story Prize, the ABA Indies’ Choice Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Héroïne, and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She is one of Time’s 100 most influential people: “more than a great writer, she’s also a great citizen, channeling her belief that everyone should be free to read the books they choose into The Lynx, her new bookstore in Gainesville, Florida.”

Stephanie Merritt’s first novel, Gaveston (Faber 2002) won a Betty Trask Award. She followed it with Real (Faber) in 2005, which she adapted for film for Gabriel Byrne’s production company, and her first non-fiction, The Devil Within (Vermilion), a memoir that was shortlisted for the 2008 Mind Book Award. In 2008 she began her historical thriller series under the pen-name S.J.Parris, featuring the 16th century heretic philosopher and spy Giordano Bruno. Heresy was followed by Prophecy, Sacrilege, Treachery and Conspiracy, and a novella, The Secret Dead. The books have been bestsellers in the UK and Canada, and Heresy was a New York Times bestseller. Stephanie has also judged the Perrier Comedy Award, the Orange New Writing Prize and the Costa Book Awards. She is a regular contributor on radio and TV, usually talking about books.

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