'Unwritten Woman': In conversation with Hannah Lavery

Award-winning Scottish poet Hannah Lavery talks about her latest collection, Unwritten Woman, a book calling for us to unveil the hidden woman behind the stories we read and tell ourselves.

To celebrate Book Week Scotland, Lavery will talk with National Librarian Amina Shah about the process of writing the book and how her experiences as a woman of colour in Scotland have shaped her writing.

About the book

In Unwritten Woman, formerly quieted realities are pushed to the front. The collection, part re-telling of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde, spotlights the women once written out. Emboldened, we join characters as they step into the centre of the page and scream until the void, the margins and in between the lines (anywhere our stories have been pushed to), come into sharp focus: out of the haar emerges community, people to shout furiously with, until we know that our experiences are truth – reality." — Titilayo Farukuoye

About the author

Hannah Lavery is an award-winning poet and playwright. She was appointed Edinburgh Makar in November 2021 for a three-year term. She is an associate artist with the National Theatre of Scotland and one of the winners of the Peggy Ramsay/Film4 Award in 2022. Her debut poetry collection, Blood Salt Spring was published in March 2022 (Polygon).

About the chair

Amina Shah, FRSE, is the National Librarian and Chief Executive of the National Library of Scotland.