This event will take place in the British Library Knowledge Centre Pigott Theatre. It will be simultaneously live streamed on the British Library platform. Tickets may be booked either to attend in person (physical) or to watch on our platform (online) either live or within 48 hours on catch up. Viewing links for the online version will be sent out shortly before the event.

A panel of garlanded writers of fiction lead us into and around the medieval world, through the medium of fiction that draws deeply on medieval sources. Siân Hughes’ novel Pearl is inspired by the poem of the same name, a poetic masterpiece of Middle English literature portraying the grief of a father struggling with the loss of his daughter. It was composed in the West Midlands region of England at the end of the 14th century and survives in a single manuscript, held at the British Library. Victoria Mackenzie’s novel For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain intertwines the voices of the visionary anchoress Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe, medieval mystic and author of the first known autobiography in the English language. The discussion will be hosted by Sarah Shin. 
 
Siân Hughes grew up in Cheshire, where her novel Pearl is set. She borrowed from the medieval poem Pearl to write a story set in an old house she cycled past every day as a child. Her first collection of poetry, The Missing (Salt, 2009), was long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award, short-listed for the Felix Dennis and Aldeburgh prizes, and won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry. Pearl is her first novel, and she lives in Malpas, UK.
 
Victoria MacKenzie is a fiction writer and poet. She is the winner of the Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award and the inaugural Emerging Writer Award from Moniack Mhor. She was shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, as well as being awarded prestigious writing residencies in Scotland, Finland and Australia. She teaches creative writing for the Open College of the Arts. She lives in Scotland.
 
Sarah Shin is a writer, editor and curator whose work includes making books, texts, gardens, games, scents, spaces, portals and practices. She is a founder and director of Ignota, a publishing house; Silver Press, the feminist publisher; the curatorial project New Suns; and Standard Deviation, a collective exploring the coincidence of psychic, geometric and inhabited spaces.

This event accompanies the British Library exhibition Medieval Women: In Their Own Words 
(25 October – 2 March 2025)

Doors and Bar open at 18:00. If you’re attending in person, please arrive no later than 15 minutes before the start time of this event. Followed by a book signing.

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

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