Event Details

Emma Claire Sweeney reads from and discusses her novel Owl Song at Dawn and biography A Secret Sisterhood: The Hidden Friendships of Austen, Bronte, Eliot and Woolf.

Emma Claire Sweeney was named as both an Amazon Rising Star and a Hive Rising Writer for her debut novel, Owl Song at Dawn (Legend, 2016). Inspired by her sister who has cerebral palsy and autism, it went on to win Nudge Literary Book of the Year.

Stemming from Something Rhymed, the website on female literary friendship that she runs with her own friend Emily Midorikawa, Emma co-wrote her debut non-fiction book, A Secret Sisterhood: The hidden friendships of Austen, Brontë, Eliot and Woolf (Aurum 2017). In her foreword, Margaret Atwood described the work as a great 'service to literary history' and The Financial Times called it ‘an exceptional act of literary espionage’.

Emma has won Society of Authors, Arts Council and Royal Literary Fund Awards, has been Writer in Residence for disability and care organisations such as Mencap, and has written for the likes of The Paris Review, TIME and The Washington Post. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Open University, and co-director of The Ruppin Agency Writers' Studio – a literary mentoring service.