About

Laurie Garrison is an academic, writer and advocate of women writers. Having founded Women Writers School in 2016, she is currently working to create an online, international network of women writers as well as a suite of courses to help them develop and promote their work. She has previously held positions at Rutgers University, Royal Holloway and the University of Lincoln. Career highlights include seeing her academic publications reviewed in the TLS and shortlisted for the international ESSE award. Most recently, her #women_writers Twitter chat was described as ‘hearteningly radical’ by the Guardian Books Blog.

Summary of work

In her previous career as an academic, Laurie Garrison published widely on nineteenth century history and literature. Her two most important books are Science, Sexuality and Sensation Novels: Pleasures of the Senses (Palgrave, 2010), The Panorama (Pickering and Chatto, 2013). More recently, she self-published a manifesto for Women Writers School: Women Writers in the Twenty-First Century: How We Can Make Online Learning, Publishing and Marketing Work for Us. She is also in the midst of writing a piece of historical fiction about William Morris’ trek around Iceland in 1871, which was his much needed escape from Jane and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s open affair.

Summary of work I’d like to do

Through the ILS, I am hoping to be able to expand my work on two projects. One is a network of women writers intended to facilitate sharing and mutual promotion of work. Ideally, I’d like this network to help remedy the problem of isolation and fragmentation of the current online presence of women writers. The other is research for an expanded, book-length version of my manifesto: I’m keen to meet other women writers who have benefited significantly from their online presence or who use the online world to support the work of other women writers.