Black Women Speak Volumes

At a time when cultural memory feels fragile and hard-won progress is under strain, Black Women Speak Volumes centres voices too often pushed to the margins — particularly those of older Black women whose lives, labour and creativity have shaped Britain in profound and lasting ways.

Dr Rebecca Loy will chair a powerful conversation with esteemed authors and activists Phina Oruche, Yvvette Edwards, Maria O’Reilly and Linda Loy.Presented in partnership with to celebrate the publication of edited by Sharmilla Beezmohun and published by the George Padmore Institute.

Join us for an evening of intergenerational dialogue, testimony and celebration — reclaiming space in the historical record and amplifying voices that refuse to be overlooked.

Yvvette Edwards is a British author of Montserratian heritage. Her novels A Cupboard Full of Coats (Kirkus Best Book of the Year) and The Mother have been widely acclaimed, with the latter named by Bernardine Evaristo as one of her Top 20 Books by Black British Womxn Writers. Her most recent tragi-comic novel, good good loving, continues her powerful exploration of love, survival and the emotional landscapes of Black British life, rendered with depth, humour and unflinching honesty. Her work has been nominated for major awards including the Man Booker Prize, NAACP Image Award and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. Her short story Security appears in New Daughters of Africa. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Phina Oruche is an actor, author, broadcaster and producer, currently starring in BBC One’s Casualty. Last year she appeared in Jimmy McGovern’s Unforgivable, underscoring a long collaboration with Jimmy and LA Productions. She has also starred in Moving On, Anthony, Taken Down and Hollyoaks. She recently wrote, produced and performed all nine characters in the filmed version of her acclaimed one-woman show Identity Crisis, which she toured across the UK, at the Edinburgh Festival and in New York to five-star reviews.

Perhaps most fondly known as Liberty Baker in ITV’s Footballers’ Wives, for which she won a Screen Nation Award for Favourite Female TV Star (by popular vote), she has also appeared in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its new Audible reimagining of the Buffyverse.

Maria O’Reilly is a lifelong racial justice activist from Liverpool. A member of the Liverpool 8 Defence Committee following the 1981 Uprisings, she later worked for the Commission for Racial Equality (1979–1989) and served as Coordinator of the L8 Law Centre (1989–2002), helping provide vital legal and social justice services to the community.

Dr Rebecca Loy is Diversity and Inclusion Partner at National Museums Liverpool, specialising in oppression, diversity and inclusion. She holds a PhD in this field and was named on the Northern Power Women Future List in 2023.

Linda Loy was an active member of the Liverpool Black Organisation and the L8 Defence Committee, campaigning for the establishment of the L8 Law Centre.

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