If you’re intending to put in an abstract for  20 minute paper, or even just to let us know you are coming – please  send in the form and let me know.

We will let you know about the acceptance of abstracts  at the end of September -but if  it is urgent because of travel arrangements please let me know as soon as you can.

Keynote Speakers
Prof Patricia Duncker, University of Manchester ( with questions from Dr Kate Aughterson  Uni B)  and Prof Lucie  Armitt,  University of Lincoln  Patricia am Lucie pm

The very existence of the term contemporary women’s writing suggests a relationship as well as a difference, a continuity, and a radical creative break between women’s writing from the 1960’s and 70’s onwards, and those works of women writers which came before. Simultaneously it suggests writing which captures the evolving spirit and concerns of the twenty first century with experimentation, innovation and speculation. Contemporary women writers have long explored their present through both the past and the future, through historical explorations of women¹s lives and worlds, and through imaginary times ahead. This conference seeks to ask what has been the big news of the last ten years in contemporary women’s writing, and what may define it in future decades. The organisers hope to explore contemporary women writers’ relationships to the past and the future, their continuities, legacies, radical breaks and innovations, including – but by no means limited to – the following topics: historical fiction; utopias / dystopias; feminist genealogies and generations; gendered temporalities; the politics of (re)writing the past and of imagining the future; women’s science fiction and fantasy; new genres/ new forms; the future of feminist literary criticism; writing in an age of crisis; defining the contemporary; women’s writing and the new technologies; women’s writing and the literary market place.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words for 20 minute papers by 22 September 2015 via this form.