The Salon Conspirators (Ben Hagen, Shilo McGiff, Drew Shannon, and Amy Smith) began The Woolf Salon Project in July 2020 to provide opportunities for conversation and to foster conviviality among Woolf-interested scholars, students, and common readers during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Each meeting has focused on a topic or text: e.g., Imagining Woolfian Criticism (No. 1); “The Leaning Tower” (No. 2); “Kew Gardens” and its recent adaptation in the anthology film London Unplugged (No. 3); and “Solid Objects” and “A Society” (No. 5). Some salons have been designed for open discussion while others—like the October 2020 event (No. 4: Planetary Woolf)—introduced attendees to the book collection, Virginia Woolf and Contemporary Global Literature (Edinburgh UP, 2021).
As the Salon Project continues, we encourage interested Woolfians to submit a proposal to host a future salon. We would especially love to feature early career researchers as well as artists and students. Attendees have loved salons that simply focus on one or two short texts. These events provide opportunities to share ideas that emerge from discussion of old favorites and discoveries of new ones.