Women, language & experience

Women, language & experience

From Arts & Ideas by BBC Radio 4

March 6, 2026 · 57 min

About this episode

The episode explores how women express themselves through language, poetry, and art in anticipation of International Women’s Day.

In a special programme looking ahead to International Women’s Day on March 8th, Shahidha Bari looks at how women express themselves in language, argument, poetry and art. Her guests include: Sara Ahmed is the author of No is Not a Lonely Utterance Karen McCarthy Woolf's latest poetry collection is called Unsafe Lauren Elkin's books include Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art, she translated Simone de Beauvoir's previously-unpublished novel The Inseparables and has a new book coming out in May Vocal Break: On Women, Music, and Power. She has been reading the new translation by Sophie Lewis of Angst by the French feminist thinker Hélène Cixous Mary Wellesley is a historian and author of Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and Their Makers Ash Percival-Borley, military historian and former soldier Producer: Luke Mulhall

People in this episode

Host: Shahidha Bari

Guests: Sara Ahmed, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Lauren Elkin, Mary Wellesley, Ash Percival-Borley

Topics covered

  • women's expression
  • language
  • poetry
  • art
  • feminism
  • International Women's Day

Keywords

  • women
  • language
  • poetry
  • art
  • feminism
  • expression
  • International Women's Day

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: No is Not a Lonely Utterance, Unsafe, Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art, The Inseparables, Angst, Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and Their Makers

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