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  • Published: 14 August 2017
  • ISBN: 9781760143268
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 128

A Universe of One's Own



Three powerful essays tracing a life in language, from the rhythms of first words to taking Virginia Woolf’s call for equality into today and beyond.

Antonia Hayes’ adventures in language began when, as a young child, she was a word sponge, soaking up speech and phrases and the sometimes haunted spaces in between. She became a natural bookworm, turning to the Baby-sitters Club series – those classics of the 90s – to start a lifetime of finding friends and comfort in the pages of a book. When her debut novel, Relativity, was published, she again turned to literature for guidance and consolation, this time in the form of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own.

Woolf wished for financial independence and a room of one’s own in which to write, but Hayes, writing almost ninety years later, argues here that maybe that isn’t enough. Perhaps women writers need a whole universe of their own. Buoyed by hope and a lifetime of language, Hayes tells us how we can dare to disturb the universe before A Room of One’s Own turns 100.

  • Published: 14 August 2017
  • ISBN: 9781760143268
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 128

About the author

Antonia Hayes

Antonia Hayes is an Australian author who grew up in Sydney, spent her twenties in Paris and currently lives in London. Her work has been published in Best Australian Essays, Meanjin, the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Daily Life and others. Antonia has worked in publishing as a publicist and a bookseller, and co-directed Australia's National Young Writers' Festival. Relativity is her debut novel and, as well as being published in Australia, rights have been sold to publishers in the US, UK, Germany, France and Turkey.

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