Medusa's Story

This event took place on the 26th of September 2022. The information below is correct as of the date published.

Join Natalie Haynes as she launches her latest epic retelling of classic myth: Stone Blind, Medusa’s Story, with readings from Lisa Dwan. Natalie is in conversation with Monique Roffey.

Medusa is the only mortal in a family of gods. When she is raped by a god, Medusa is changed forever: turned into a Gorgon with sharp teeth, snakes for hair, and a gaze that turns any living creature to stone. She endures a life of solitude, until Perseus embarks upon his fateful quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon...

From the Women’s Prize-shortlisted author of A Thousand Ships, this is the story of how a young woman became a monster. And how she was never really a monster at all.

Natalie Haynes is a writer and broadcaster and – according to the Washington Post – a ‘rock star mythologist’. Her previous books are The Amber Fury, The Ancient Guide to Modern Life, The Children of Jocasta, A Thousand Ships (shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction) and Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myth. Six series of her show, Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics have been broadcast on Radio 4: all are available on BBC Sounds.

Monique Roffey FRSL is an award winning Trinidadian born British writer of novels, essays, literary journalism and a memoir. Her most recent novel, The Mermaid of Black Conch, (Peepal Tree Press) won the Costa Book of the Year Award, 2020, and was nominated for eight major awards. Her other Caribbean novels are The White Woman on the Green Bicycle and House of Ashes. Archipelago won the OCM Bocas Award for Caribbean Literature in 2013. She is a co-founder of Writers Rebel within Extinction Rebellion, and Professor of Contemporary Fiction at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Lisa Dwan is an Irish performer and writer. She stars in the Top Boy and Bloodlands series, and her theatre work includes a one-woman production of her adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s No’s Knife. Dwan writes and teaches on theatre, culture, gender, and Beckett. She is a visiting professor at Princeton University, and was artist in residence at Columbia University, where she developed a new theatre piece with Margaret Atwood based on Medea.

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