This Woman’s Work + Vashti Bunyan in Conversation
Channel: British Library
Date: 2022-04-27

A two part evening of conversations with and about women in music, as we launch two new books: This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music and Wayward, Just Another Life to Live, a memoir by Vashti Bunyan.

This Woman’s Work is edited by musician Kim Gordon and writer Sinéad Gleeson and includes contributions by Anne Enright, Fatima Bhutto, Maggie Nelson, Margo Jefferson, Megan Jasper, Ottessa Moshfegh, Zakia Sewell and many more. Covering themes as diverse as Laurie Anderson, Sub Pop records and Ella Fitzgerald and ranging across activism, breaking genres and dictatorship, it confronts the male dominance and sexism that have been hard-coded in the canons of music and writing and that have forced women to speak up and to shout louder to tell their story.

Vashti Bunyan released her iconic album Just Another Diamond Day in 1970. It had emerged following two years wandering as far as the Outer Hebrides, with a horse, wagon, dog, guitar and her then partner; its lilting lyrics and guitar conveying innocent wonder at the world. Despite this and an earlier fledgling career in mid-sixties pop – recording a single written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards – her failure to make any headway with her own songs led Vashti to reject the music world altogether, until the rediscovery of her recordings in 2000 brought her deserved acclaim and a second chance to write, record and perform once more. In her new memoir Wayward, Vashti tells the story a life lived at full tilt from the first, revealing what it means to change course and her emotional struggle, learning to take back control of her own life.

Sinéad Gleeson has written essays for Granta, Winter Papers and Gorse, and broadcast by BBC and RTÉ. Her debut essay collection Constellations: Reflections from Life (Picador (UK), won Non-Fiction Book of the Year at 2019 Irish Book Awards and the 2020 Dalkey Literary Award for Emerging Writer. It was shortlisted for the 2020 Rathbones Folio Prize, the Michel Déon Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Her short stories have featured in various anthologies including Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber, 2019) and Repeal the 8th. She has edited the award-winning anthologies The Long Gaze Back: An Anthology of Irish Women Writers and The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women Writers from the North of Ireland. The Art of Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories, was published by Head of Zeus in October 2020. She is currently working on a novel.

Jude Rogers is a writer, especially on music, who has written for the Guardian, the Observer, the Sunday Times, the Times Saturday Review, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman, MOJO, Q, NME, The Quietus and The Gentlewoman. Jude’s favourite anecdotes include Chrissie Hynde spontaneously painting her portrait; sharing a Pret fish salad in New York with Björk; Robert Plant making her a cup of PG Tips in Nashville while singing a Welsh hymn, and Lady Gaga feeding her whisky backstage at the O2,. Her new book, The Sound of Being Human: How Music Shapes our Lives is due out in April 2022.

Zakia Sewell is broadcaster, writer and DJ from London with a passion for music, arts, mental health and history. I regularly produce and present radio documentaries and podcasts for platforms including BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service, Tate, and Boiler Room, covering varied topics, from British folk culture, to schizophrenia, to Sabar drumming in Senegal, and was the recipient of the silver award for 'Best New Voice' at the Audio Production Awards in 2021. She made her broadcasting debut on NTS Radio, with her show Questing w/ Zakia, which she hosted for 5 years before taking on the NTS Breakfast show, which she now hosts twice a week. Zakia DJs regularly at clubs and festivals in London and abroad, and has played for esteemed venues and festivals such as Brilliant Corners, Corsica Studios, XOYO, Dimensions and Dekmantel. Her articles have appeared in Weird Walk and Resident Advisor.

This Woman’s Work and Wayward are published by White Rabbit books.