The Glasshouse

Some people, some times, just can’t say what they want to. But why not? We attempt to fill the silence by exploring the psychological, physical, or cultural reasons with a graphic novelist, a writer, a filmmaker who stopped speaking, and a writer and trustee of the North East Dads and Lads project. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough chairs.

Sarah Moss is a novelist and Professor at the University of Warwick. Her most recent book Ghost Wall is set in Northumberland and articulates the tangled space of love, abuse and resistance. Her previous novels include Cold Earth, Night Waking, Signs for Lost Children and The Tidal Zone. She has written for The Guardian, New Statesman, The Independent and BBC Radio.

Michael Richardson is a Lecturer in Human Geography at Newcastle University. He has longstanding research interests in masculinities and intergenerational relationships on post-industrial Tyneside. He is a trustee of North East Young Dads and Lads project and works closely with Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children’s Books.

Harriet Shawcross is an award-winning filmmaker and journalist. Her first book Unspeakable reflects on how, as a teenager, she stopped speaking at school for almost a year, communicating only when absolutely necessary. It mixes personal experience with travel diaries and interviews including Eve Ensler creator of The Vagina Monologues.

Una is an artist and writer. Her first graphic novel Becoming Unbecoming is part memoir and part social history of sexual violence, misogyny and murder in Yorkshire in the 70s and 80s. She has also written a comic about her mother’s psychosis, On Sanity: One Day In Two Lives and Cree, a comic about women in County Durham, commissioned by New Writing North. Una is currently working on a second novel for Virago Press.

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough of Durham University, has presented Beyond the Walls: In Search of the Celts for BBC Four, Essays and Documentaries for BBC Radio 3’s special seasons on Forests and The Frozen North. She is author of Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas and 6 years ago she became one of the BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinkers.

For your information…

• Phase one tickets will be available from 12noon on Friday 15 February, with phase two tickets available from 12noon on Friday 1 March.
• Tickets are strictly limited to four per person.
• To guarantee your ticket book in advance. There will be some tickets available on the day on a first come, first served basis.
• Please take your seats 10 minutes prior to the event start time otherwise you may lose your place.