Sally Bayley: "The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place"

In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, the critically acclaimed author, Oxford scholar, literature teacher and performer Dr Sally Bayley chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about The Green Lady: A Spirit, A Story, A Place.

Part memoir, part fiction, The Green Lady is an experimental mix of biography, fiction and family history.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• The Green Lady explores a child’s search for artistic education and a sense of self. Lyrical and playful, Sally Bayley’s writing transports readers into an eccentric world of teachers, guardians and guiding spirits of place. Moved by her female teachers, and guided by the artist J.M.W. Turner, Bayley’s protagonist goes in search of her maternal ancestors, especially her grandmother, Edna May Turner.
• Sally’s inspiration for crafting The Green Lady, the final book in her experimental literary coming of age trilogy of a young girl immersing herself in the world of lyrical language and poetry
• Why Sally crafted The Green Lady as an experimental mix of biography, fiction and family history
• The meaning of the title, The Green Lady
• How The Green Lady continued Virginia Woolf’s Orlando as an imagined biography
• How Sally crafted deeply sensory and visceral narrative filled with vivid visual imagery, poetry, music, song, drama and movement
• Sally’s response to the question: ‘Who gets to be the subject of a biography and have their life told, and who remains invisible?’