Marisa Bate with Natasha Lunn

Marisa is an impassioned speaker who has established herself as a prominent feminist writer and commentator. She has written for publications such as the Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, Marie Claire, PORTER, and Vogue.co.uk.

She joins us in the bookshop to discuss her book Wild Hope. After stumbling upon a photograph of her mother from decades before, Marisa was struck by the captured optimism; her mother seemed fuelled by the promise of a new beginning and the tapestry of opportunity an America of Gloria Steinem, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, and the newly passed Roe v. Wade, appeared to offer.

Today this story of promise seems at risk of being written over, as women around the world suffer in the face of populism, a politics that thrives on divisiveness, and a determined assault on women’s rights. Meanwhile, the women for whom this all feels disturbingly familiar are being lost to time. That same tapestry of opportunity now feels threadbare. Did hope, for Marisa’s mother and women like her, get left in 1974?

Marisa will be joined by the wonderful Natasha Lunn, author of Conversations on Love, a top ten Sunday Times bestseller. After years of feeling that love was always out of reach, journalist Natasha Lunn set out to understand how relationships work and evolve over a lifetime. She turned to authors and experts to learn about their experiences, as well as drawing on her own, asking: How do we find love? How do we sustain it? And how do we survive when we lose it?