A Universe of One’s Own

Antonia Hayes’ adventures in language began when, as a young child, she was a word sponge, soaking up speech and phrases and the sometimes haunted spaces in between. She became a natural bookworm, turning to the Baby-sitters Club series – those classics of the 90s – to start a lifetime of finding friends and comfort in the pages of a book. When her debut novel, Relativity, was published, she again turned to literature for guidance and consolation, this time in the form of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. Woolf wished for financial independence and a room of one’s own in which to write, but Hayes, writing almost ninety years later, argues here that maybe that isn’t enough. Perhaps women writers need a whole universe of their own. Buoyed by hope and a lifetime of language, Hayes tells us how we can dare to disturb the universe before A Room of One’s Own turns 100.