Josephine Taylor - Eye of a Rook

Join us on International Womens Day to celebrate Josephine Taylor's debut novel, Eye of a Rook.

In 1860s London, Arthur sees his wife, Emily, suddenly struck down by a pain for which she can find no words, forced to endure harmful treatments and reliant on him for guidance. Meanwhile, in contemporary Perth, Alice, a writer, and her older husband, Duncan, find their marriage threatened as Alice investigates the history of hysteria, female sexuality and the treatment of the female body – her own and the bodies of those who came before.

Josephine Taylor will be appearing in conversation with Cassandra Atherton.

This event will take place on Zoom. The Zoom meeting details form part of your ticket, emailed to you after registration. 

Praise for the Book

'A masterful exploration of the tangled relationship between body and self; bold and intellectually tough, and intensely lyrical.'

Lee Kofman

‘Eye of a Rook is raw and intelligent, a searing depiction of the secret journey of female bodies.’ Donna Mazza

‘Courageous and enthralling … this compassionate, beautifully written book explores important questions about the forces that make us who we are and who we might wish to become.’ Susan Midalia

About the Author 

Josephine Taylor is a writer and freelance editor who lives on the coast north of Perth, Western Australia. She is Associate Editor at Westerly Magazine and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Writing at Edith Cowan University. Josephine teaches, facilitates and judges in literary fiction and creative non-fiction. Her personal essays and fiction have been anthologised, and published in journals including Axon, M/C Journal, Outskirts, Southerly, TEXT and Westerly. Her debut novel is Eye of a Rook.

About the Moderator

Cassandra Atherton is an international expert on the prose poetry form and an award winning prose poet. Her specialization in prose poetry extends to the democratisation of poetry, focusing on poets as public intellectuals, specifically, hibakusha poets. Cassandra was a Visiting Scholar in English at Harvard University sponsored by Professor Stephen Greenblatt and has been part of the Harvard University public intellectual symposia since 2013. Cassandra has authored and edited over thirty critical and creative books (with three more in progress) and has been invited to edit twelve special editions of leading refereed journals.