Join debut author Heidi Hinda Chadwick for a reading and conversation on 'The Story of the Deer Woman'. Set in Manchester, this adult, lyrical, twisted fairytale explores what happens after happily ever after. Uneasy, tender and quietly radical, it illuminates women’s hidden desires, appetites and transformations, celebrating wildness, love and ageing, and confronting the monstrous within the stories we inherit and the lives we live.

Following the reading, Heidi Hinda will give a short talk reflecting on the themes raised in the text, particularly the cultural invisibility of women’s desires and appetites as women age, and the way these experiences are often framed as excessive, taboo or monstrous. This talk will consider how storytelling can reclaim these shadowed aspects of womanhood, not to sanitise them, but to allow them to be felt, enjoyed and owned. The talk draws on fairytale, myth and lived experience as a writer debuting later in life.

The event concludes with a facilitated audience discussion, offering space for reflection and conversation around visibility, hungers, wildness, shame, pleasure, desire and the narratives we inherit about womanhood, love, beauty and what women are permitted to want.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-story-of-the-deer-woman-tickets-1988897363554