Dundee Contemporary Arts September 6

LITERARY DUNDEE’S popular salon series returns next month with Glasgow writer and critic Lesley McDowell, whose new book about the turbulent lives of female writers has been causing waves.

“Between the Sheets” explores the relationships of nine of the world’s most famous female writers with the “bad boys” of literature. During the evening event, Lesley will be discussing women’s writing, the role of the critic and giving tips on how to review a book.

Lesley holds a PhD in James Joyce and Feminist theory and published her first work of fiction – The Picnic – in 2007. She spent two years working in the English department of the University of St Andrews and reviews for a number of national newspaper titles. She lives in Glasgow.

Her new non-fiction work features figures such as Sylvia Plath, Hilda Doolittle and Simone De Beauvoir and is drawn from writers’ diaries, letters and journals. It examines the extent to which each woman was prepared to put artistic ambition before personal happiness, and how dependent on their male writing partners they felt themselves to be.

Lesley is working on a proposal for her second nonfiction book about literary muses from the early 20th century. She describes this kind of work as “literary journalism” as opposed to academic research.

She said: “This book is a little bit similar to Between the Sheets as a muse is a relational person but I’m not really looking at the relation- ship, instead I am looking at the women. We have people such as Zelda Fitzgerald, Lucia Joyce, Vivienne Eliot and Violet Hunt. Funnily enough, I have nine women again and I chose to do this because, historically, there are nine classical muses and I thought it would be nice to replicate that.

“All the women in Between the Sheets wrote about their personal lives and put it into their fiction or poetry. They all took personal material and turned it into art. I think it gives a deeper appreciation of their writing when you know the back story.

“I think, traditionally, women were silenced about certain things and weren’t able to speak about them. One of the things that interested me was women who had made that step into the public realm with their personal lives. It felt like quite a political thing to do.”

Lesley says there is an art to being a critic: “A bad review is a bit like a bee sting, it hurts at the time but it goes away. I have never written a bad review of a book because I didn’t like the person.”

Future salons will feature actor and playwright Matthew McVarrish, Dundee crime writer Russel McLean and award-winning Scots writer Janice Galloway.

The salons run from 5pm7pm at DCA, Nethergate, Dundee. Admission is free and seats are available on a first come, first served basis, so early arrival is recommended.

Lesley McDowell.