Hag: Folktales and Feminism Panel Discussion

Masuda Snaith is winner of the SI Leeds Literary Prize and Bristol Short Story Prize.  Her debut novel, The Things We Thought We Knew, was chosen as a World Book Night Book and her second novel, How to Find Home, was read on BBC Radio 4. She was named an ‘Observer New Face of Fiction’. She has led creative writing workshops in universities, hospitals, schools and in a homeless hostel. She is a commissioned writer for the Colonial Countryside project and her short story, ‘The Panther’s Tale’, is included in Hag: Forgotten Folktales Retold.

Natasha Carthew is a working-class writer and poet who was raised in Cornwall and is of Cornish ethnic minority heritage. She is the author of nine books, including those published by Bloomsbury, Quercus and the National Trust. Her latest book, Born Between Crosses, is a sequence of prose-poetry celebrating the working lives of working-class women, published with Hypatia Publications 2021, and her latest short-story features in HAG: Forgotten Folk Tales published by Virago Press. She is well known for writing on both socioeconomic and nature/environmental issues and has written extensively on the subject of nature writing and how authentic rural working-class voices are represented in fiction for several publications and programmes; including Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook, The Royal Society of Authors Journal, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, The Guardian, The Dark Mountain Project, The Bookseller, Book Brunch, The Big Issue and The Economist. She is founder of The Nature Writing Prize for Working Class Writers and Artistic Director of The Working-Class Writers Festival.  @natashacarthew

Emma Glass was born in Wales in 1987 and is now based in London, where she writes and works as a children’s nurse. Her novels Peach and Rest and Be Thankful are published by Bloomsbury.

Rose Tomaszewska is Editorial Director at Virago and has worked for over ten years publishing literary fiction and non-fiction. Her authors have won or been shortlisted for prizes including the Women’s Prize, Baillie Gifford, Desmond Elliot, Bath Novel and Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. At Virago she co-runs the Speakeasy at Pages events and the podcast OurShelves. She teaches writers at various universities and festivals as well as the Faber Academy and Arvon.