Who Gave You Permission?: Speaking Up and Speaking Out

'Sometimes, there can be a slightly condescending assumption that anything unlikable about a female character is a mistake, as if they’re a contestant in a beauty pageant and have to seem charming and upbeat all the time.'

Curtis Sittenfeld is the bestselling author of five novels – the cult-classic Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland and Eligible – and one story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It.

Her books have been selected by the New York Times, Time, Entertainment Weekly and People for their ‘Ten Best Books of the Year’ lists, optioned for television and film, and translated into 30 languages. Her short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, and Esquire, and her non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, Time, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic, Slate, and on This American Life.

PLAYLIST

Writing

• Jane Mayer's journalism, including her books Dark Money (Doubleday) and Strange Justice (Graymalkin Media)
• Alice Munro's short stories, especially Open Secrets (Penguin Random House)
• A Lucky Man by Jamel Brinkley (Serpent's Tail)
• Good Talk by Mira Jacob (One World)
• Make Your Home Among Strangers (fiction; Picador) and My Time Among the Whites (essays; Picador) by Jennine Capó Crucet

TV

• Queer Eye
• Shrill
• Crashing

Music

• Brandi Carlile

‘I wanted what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can’t have it all.’

While Ariel Levy’s writing effortlessly moves between hulking subjects like sex, love and loss, her most familiar theme is freedom. From her bestselling debut, Female Chauvinist Pigs, which chronicled the rise of raunch culture, to her National Magazine Award- winning piece ‘Thanksgiving in Mongolia’ in the New Yorker (where she’s been a staff writer since 2008), Levy’s work explores and subverts expectations around what a woman’s life should look like. These intentions were crystalised in her 2017 memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply.

‘As we commit to each other to build this movement of resistance and liberation, no one can be an afterthought.’

Raquel Willis is a Black queer transgender activist, writer and speaker dedicated to inspiring and elevating marginalized individuals, particularly transgender women of color. She is currently the Executive Editor of Out Magazine. In 2018, she was named a Jack Jones Literary Arts Sylvia Rivera Fellow. She's also a part of Echoing Ida, a national Black women and nonbinary writers' collective. She is a former National Organizer for Transgender Law Center.

In 2018, she was also named an Open Society Foundations Soros Equality Fellow. She launched Black Trans Circles, a project focused on developing the leadership of Black trans women in the South and Midwest by creating healing justice spaces to work through oppression-based trauma, incubating community organizing efforts to address anti-trans murder and violence and elevating nuanced narratives through a national storytelling campaign.

Born and raised in Augusta, GA, Raquel Willis has a loving mother who supports her in all of the work that she does. She is also the youngest child in her family and has a sister, a brother, two nieces and three nephews. She credits the passing of her late father as the catalyst for her transition and career. Raquel is a thought leader on gender, race and intersectionality.

Michelle Law is a writer and actor working across print, theatre and screen. Her work includes the play Single Asian Female and the SBS show Homecoming Queens, which she co-created, co-wrote and starred in. Her latest play, Miss Peony, will be staged at Belvoir St Theatre.