The International Medieval Congress (IMC), held on the campus of the University of Leeds every summer since 1994, is the biggest humanities gathering in Europe. I’ve wanted to go for years—even before I started writing Hild. This year I’m finally getting my wish: I’ll be part of an IMC event on the evening of Wednesday, 5th July.

The introduction is sure to be interesting—Elaine Treharne is a powerhouse (see for example her work on Beowulf By All)—and my interlocutors for the conversation, Jenny Neville and Megan Cavell, are responsible for The Riddle Ages, specialising in Old English riddles (go check out the website, it’s wonderful). And both Josh Davies (who was amazingly helpful with my wheelchair on the cobbles at King’s College London a few years ago) and Matt Hussey (who was responsible for getting me to my very first medieval bash, IONA) are extremely good at organising interesting things.

The room they’ve booked for me is a biggish space, so I want lots of people to come; it’s free and open to the public; and there’ll be a Q&A—which can sometimes get pretty interesting—and afterwards I’ll sign your books. (Some of my books will be for sale at the event, though I’m not sure which ones yet. So if you have a favourite, bring it.)

The event is free, open to the public, and doesn’t require any registration or pre-booking.

Although I’ve never been to IMC, medievally-speaking it’s not my first rodeo. In 2019 I spent five days at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, to attend IONA: Early medieval studies on the islands of the North Atlantic, which was all about transformative networks, skills, theories, and methods for the future of the field. I gave one of the plenary lectures:

The Personal is Political—and Scholarly, and Creative

This plenary presentation discusses how Griffith’s most recent novel, Hild (2013) operates as a second-order discourse on the illusory nature of history’s immutability: how the novel deconstructs the intersectional development of oppressive discourse on gender, sexual orientation, race, and (with forthcoming Hild sequel Menewood) disability. Central to Griffith’s address is why she chose a queer female protagonist for these novels set in seventh-century Britain, and era of ethnogenesis and cultural change. In doing so, Griffith focuses on the embodiment of the novel, protagonist, and author to argue for the urgent necessity of acknowledging and incorporating one’s understanding of embodiment—and, therefore, identity—into not only the creative arts but scholarly inquiry.

It was described as a lecture, and the abstract made it sound as though I would talk in tortured academy-speak, but it wasn’t and I didn’t. It was very much like one of the usual presentations I give when a novel first comes out—talking about why and how I did what I did, what it means and what I loved about it, diving deep into some bits, doing snippets of readings, talking about research, and surprises—only here less focused on the inspiration and process and more on the reasoning and meaning and lessons learnt, and what could be applied to scholarly inquiry.

I loved doing it. The audience seemed to enjoy it. (That is, they appeared energised and engaged, which for me is the point of pubic events: everyone has a good time.) But this was just part of the pleasure of IONA. The best part was spending time with some of the medievalists whose work I already knew—Clare Lees! Gillian Overing! Catherine Karkov! Karen Jolly! Elaine Treharne! Josh Davies!—most of whom I was meeting for the first time but a couple for the second time (I’d met Clare Lees a few years earlier when she invited me to present at Kings College London, which is where I met Josh—and those bloody cobblestones—too). The worst part was that every single demonstration, panel or seminar I wanted to attend was scheduled against something else I wanted to see. So the joy of finally swimming in the same pool as experts in the field was constantly muted with mourning for all the things I was missing. I met dozens of people working on things I’m interested in, too many names to mention—and this was a conference of fewer than 300 people! IMC will be nearly 3,000 from all over the world. It will be overwhelming. In a good way.

So if you’re a medievalist who will be in or near Leeds for IMC, whether or not we’ve had any kind of conversation or correspondence, I would love (love love love) to see you/have a drink/exchange contact info and/or hear about what you’re working on. (If you have my email address, just email me. If you don’t and want to email me anyway please use the contact form. Or DM me on Twitter or Instagram—please don’t use Facebook; I keep those notifications turned off. Or just drop a comment here.)

If you’re simply interested in and love history, or want to know more about Hild, or have read Hild or Spear and want to know about Menewood—or why on earth anyone serious about Early Medieval Britain would want to touch the Matter of Britain even with a bargepole—or just want to get your book/s signed, or watch a bunch of medievalists having a blast, please come to the event. And do come and say hello. I’m very much looking forward to meeting you all!

Here are the details again, just in case the screenshot above is hard to read. Follow the link to the official bumf and to look at the rest of the (massive! overwhelming!) programme.

Wednesday, July 5, 2023 — Leeds, UK — International Medieval Congress

• Event: 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM, Esther Simpson Building, Room LG08, University of Leeds
• Early Medieval Identities in Hild, Spear, and Menewood: Retelling History and Myth to Include Us All  In conversation with Megan Cavell (University of Birmingham) and Jenny Neville (Royal Holloway, University of London). 
• Introduced by Elaine Treharne (Stanford University) 
• Q&A hosted by Joshua Davies (King’s College London) & Matt Hussey (Simon Fraser University, British Columbia) 
• Free and open to the public—no registration or pre-booking required
• This event was organised by the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, with support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the IONA association.