Somerville alumna Maggie Gee (1966, English) has been profiled in Scotland’s The Herald for the launch of her latest novel Virginia Woolf in Manhattan.
Gee first had the idea for the novel, which places Virginia Woolf in 21st-century New York, four years ago while trying to access the primary Woolf archive in New York.
The collection is deemed too precious for such access to be granted, which set Gee imagining a writer who was so keen to access Woolf that the author herself reappeared.
But Gee was shown a copy of the typescript of a 1938 article written by Woolf. ‘America, which I have never seen’ was Woolf’s depiction of an imagined, exotic America.
Gee began writing her novel while on the same trip.
Maggie Gee is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. The full newspaper feature, which was published on Saturday, can be read on the newspaper’s website.