The Virginia Woolf Podcast

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A new stage adaptation of The Waves has just premiered at the Jermyn St theatre to sell-out shows. In this episode, Karina interviews the scriptwriter, Flora Wilson Brown, and director, Júlia Levai
To purchase the script, head to https://www.nickhernbooks.co.uk/the-waves
Flora Wilson Brown is a writer and dramaturg. Her first play I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW, about friendship and abusive relationships, premiered at the Southwark Playhouse in 2022 to critical acclaim. Her second play THE BEAUTIFUL FUTURE IS COMING, which explores existential questions about the climate crisis across time through three women and their relationships, had a critically acclaimed run on the Bristol Old Vic’s main stage in summer 2025 before transferring to the Traverse for the Edinburgh Festival 2025 in a production directed by Nancy Medina. She is on attachment to the National Theatre and under commission to the Globe Theatre, and in screen is writing an episode for an anthology series about Gen Z for Hat Trick.
Júlia Levai is a theatre director & dramaturg from Budapest based in London. She recently directed the critically acclaimed premiere of Nancy Netherwood’s new play, Radiant Boy at Southwark Playhouse. Her production of Petty Men (after Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar) won the European Shakespeare Festival Network’s 2026 Award and will be touring across Europe in 2026.
Júlia regularly works at the National Theatre as Staff Director (Land of the Living, Coriolanus, Dear Octopus), Script Reader and Mentor Director for NT Connections. In 2024, she trained on the NT Studio’s Directors Course.

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This podcast is all about the wonderful Jane Harrison, the inimitable classicist who was a significant influence on Virginia Woolf. 
To discuss Jane's life and legacy we have Ann Kennedy Smith. Ann is a writer, researcher, and literary critic. Her essays and reviews have been published in the Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Slightly Foxed magazine, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Journal of Victorian Culture, English Review and History Today. She has given lectures for Cambridge University Library, Literature Cambridge (with Dr Trudi Tate) and Cambridge alumni associations, and in January 2023 she was a guest on BBC Radio 3’s ‘Freethinking’ programme, talking about women in higher education. She is currently working on a book about the Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society 1890-1914. She is a member of Clare Hall Art Committee.
You can access her excellent substack, 'The Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society' through the following link:
https://akennedysmith.substack.com/?utm_source=global-search

To learn more about Literature Cambridge, go to https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk or follow them on:

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Frances Spalding discusses her thoughts on Bloomsbury, a meeting with Duncan Grant, and the wonderful Stevie Smith. 
To learn more about Literature Cambridge, go to https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk or follow them on:

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In this episode, Karina speaks with Urmila Seshagiri about 'The Life of Violet,' a previously unpublished manuscript by Virginia Woolf that has just been released by Princeton University Press. Urmila is Distinguished Professor in Humanities and Professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is the author of Race and the Modernist Imagination (Cornell UP), and is the editor of Virginia Woolf’s The Life of Violet (Princeton UP), Jacob’s Room (Oxford UP), and To the Lighthouse (W. W. Norton; in preparation), and she is preparing the first scholarly edition of Woolf’s memoir, A Sketch of the Past
To learn more about Literature Cambridge, go to https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk or follow them on:

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This is episode is all about writers' rooms - where do writers really work, and why are we so invested in the romance of the writing process? Academic and author, Katie da Cunha Lewin has thought a great deal about this subject, and her recent book 'The Writer's Room' explores it in depth. In this episode, Karina chats to Katie about the politics and practicalities of authorship, and (of course) about Virginia Woolf's own writing process. 
To learn more about Literature Cambridge, go to https://www.literaturecambridge.co.uk or follow them on:

https://litcamb.substack.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/literature-cambridge
and Instagram @litcamb