IVWS Event

Featuring a roundtable of Woolf scholars, colleagues, and friends

Date: 22 September 2023
Time: 3:00–4:30pm EDT (New York)/12:00–1:30pm PDT (Los Angeles)/8:00–9:30pm BST (London)
(This event will take place over Zoom. IVWS members will be sent a Zoom link via email ahead of the event. If you are not a member of the International Virginia Woolf Society, please reach out to Benjamin Hagen (benjamin.hagen@usd.edu), the President, to express interest in the event, and you will receive the Zoom link.)

The IVWS is pleased to announce an event celebrating the life and work of the Louise DeSalvo near what would have been her 81st birthday (September 27th). The 9/22 event will be the third in a series of birthday celebrations and commemorations, which began in 2021. You can watch the first event on YouTube here. The first event was presented by the New Jersey City University Center for the Arts and was hosted by Edvige Giunta and Donia Ayoub.

The 9/22 event will run like a conference roundtable (without the table…). Each presenter will speak for about 5–7 minutes. Those who knew Louise might share memories of their interactions with her; those who knew her primarily through her writing will share thoughts and reflections on her impact on Woolf studies—and beyond. After each participant speaks, the session will open to a general Q&A and discussion with all attendees. Everyone attending will be free to ask questions or to share memories or reflections of their own.

Participants TBD!

DeSalvo was the author of a number of books—Vertigo: A Memoir (1997), Breathless: An Asthma Journal (1997), Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives (2000), Crazy in the Kitchen: Food, Feuds and Forgiveness in an Italian American Family (2005), Chasing Ghosts: A Memoir of a Father, Gone to War (2015), and more—but to many Woolfians she is best known for her 1989 biography Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work as well as Virginia Woolf’s First Voyage: A Novel in the Making (1980), editions of Melymbrosia, and The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf (with Mitchell Leaska). This roundtable aims to give attendees a fresh and full sense of DeSalvo’s contributions to Woolf studies as well as a sense of her impact and legacy (personal and professional) on this field and on all those committed to the literary arts.