RESISTANCE: an all day symposium hosted by Scottish PEN Women Writer’s Committee and Institute for the Advanced Studies in Humanities (IASH)

Featuring – Jackie Kay, Sim Bajwa, Caroline Bowditch, Afshan D’souza-Lodhi, Beth Banjeree-Richards and Alice Tarbuck

This will be an open, supported discussion on Resistance as a way of exploring and fighting for change around the boundaries of gender, womenhood, the limits of language and experiences of misogyny, violence and power. The day will be built on a fully intersectional approach, and the discussions will include issues related to women and non-binary people across a range of classes, ethnicities, abilities, races, and sexualities. The day is open to all and free to attend, and includes lunch and refreshments.

Organised to align with International Women’s Day, we are interested in ensuring that our discussions of gender and discrimination remain inclusive, open, and actively support the ever-changing and dynamic nature of these issues.

Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay was born and brought up in Scotland. The Adoption Papers won the Forward Prize, a Saltire prize, and a Scottish Arts Council Prize. Her collection of poems, Fiere, was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award. Her novel Trumpet won the Guardian Fiction Award and was shortlisted for the IMPAC award. Red Dust Road won the Scottish Book of the Year Award. She was awarded an MBE in 2006, and made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002. She is Chancellor of the University of Salford and Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Jackie Kay was named Scots Makar—the National Poet for Scotland—in March 2016

Sim Bajwa

Sim Bajwa is a writer based in the West Midlands. She graduated from Edinburgh Napier University with an MA in Creative Writing in 2016. Her fiction and non-fiction has been published in Helios Quarterly, The Dangerous Women Project, 404 Ink’s Nasty Women, and Fiction & Feeling’s Becoming Dangerous anthology. She is currently working on her first fantasy novel.

Beth Banerjee-Richards

Beth Banerjee-Richards is a seventeen year old poet and prose writer from Yorkshire, now living on Orkney. She was awarded a place on Scottish Book Trust’s “What’s Your Story?” Teen development programme in 2017. Her work is largely historical and explores the way women have been restrained and how they resist through time. She has a particular fondness for Ancient Rome.

Caroline Bowditch

Caroline Bowditch describes herself as a performer, maker, teacher, speaker and mosquito buzzing in the ears of the arts industry in the UK and further afield.

She co-created NQR and the Long and the Short of it as Scottish Dance Theatre’s Dance Agent for Change (2008-2012). In 2012, Caroline created Leaving Limbo Landing for the Cultural Olympiad and in 2014 created Falling in Love with Frida, which was awarded a prestigious Herald Angel award. She was commissioned, by Unlimited and the Northern Festivals Network, to create and tour The Adventures of Snigel, a promenade piece for children under 8. She collaborated with designer, Laura Hook, to create Snigel and Friends, for audiences under 1 and their adult, which was nominated for a Total Theatre Award in 2017 and continues to tour nationally and internationally.

She has led international residencies in Italy, Switzerland and Germany is regularly invited to be mentor local, national and international disabled and non-disabled artists at all levels of their artistic development

Caroline is currently an Artist in Association with Tramway, Dance4 (Nottingham), Paragon Music and Imaginate.

Afshan D’souza-Lodhi

Afshan D’souza-Lodhi was born in Dubai and is of Indian/Pakistani descent. Afshan is a writer and performer. She writes plays, prose and performance pieces. She has completed residencies at Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester Literature Festival and has worked with Eclipse Theatre, Tamasha Theatre Company and Paul Burston’s Polari. Afshan is currently Editor in Chief of TCS and sits on the board of Brighter Sound. Follow Afshan on twitter @ashlodhi or visit her website, www.afshan.info

Alice Tarbuck

Alice Tarbuck is a writer and academic. Recent publications include essays in Monstrous Regiment’s The Bi-ble and 404 Ink’s Nasty Women, and poems in Erotoplasty Zine and RAUM 4. Her first pamphlet is forthcoming from Sad Press. She is Postgraduate Fellow at the Centre for Poetic Innovation, St Andrews and Dundee.