14 Nov 2015 – talk by Bristol author Beatrice Hitchman and OutStories AGM

Beatrice Hitchman:  Negotiating with the Dead: Writing Lesbian Historical Fiction

The tribade, in search of one of her own kind, has a distinctive badge: this is the magnificent, curled, trimmed, sometimes beribboned poodle.

For one social commentator this was the typical lesbian in fin-de-siècle Paris: poodle-toting, cruising on the Champs-Elysees, or fighting each other as part of two warring gangs. It’s the kind of period detail novelists love.

But how reliable is the witness? How does a lesbian historical novelist go about writing a past that’s complicated by bias or plain old invisibility? This talk by Bristol lesbian author Beatrice Hitchman looks at the ethical detective work of researching a novel and what writers owe – or don’t owe – to communities of the dead.

The talk will be followed by OutStories Bristol’s AGM.

Saturday 14th November 2015.    2pm to 4pm.

The Function Room,     The Golden Guinea,     19 Guinea Street,    Bristol,    BS1 6SX.

Map

Please note: there are nine steps up to the front door, and 12 steps down to the basement function room.

The event is free and open to everyone, however a small donation to OutStories Bristol would be appreciated.

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Beatrice Hitchman was born in London in 1980. She read English and French at Edinburgh University and then completed an MA in Comparative Literature. After a year living in Paris, she moved back to the UK, trained and worked as a documentary film editor, also writing and directing short films. In 2009 she graduated from the Bath Spa Creative Writing MA, winning the Greene & Heaton Prize for best novel-in-progress.

Petite Mort was published in March 2013 by Serpent’s Tail. It was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Authors’ Club First Novel Prize, has been shortlisted for the Polari Prize and the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Novel Prize, and adapted on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour as a ten-part serial starring Honor Blackman.