Marvellous creatures, transgender sailors and sex-changing fish

The work of Sarah Waters, author of the widely-acclaimed new novel The Little Stranger, and the verse of Liverpool-based poet Cath Nichols will come under the spotlight during the three-day international Feminist and Women's Studies Association (FWSA) Conference at the Bluecoat, Liverpool, on Friday, 19 June.

Dr Mari Hughes-Edwards, Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Edge Hill University, will examine the ways in which these two contemporary British writers construct transgender and lesbian desire.

Dr Hughes-Edwards will look at male impersonation, drag, and the Victorian music hall, focusing on the many transformations of cross-dressing Nan King in Waters' 1998 novel, Tipping the Velvet, who appears in the novel as an oyster girl, a music-hall star, a rent boy and a reluctant political activist. Meanwhile, Nichols' poetry collection, Tales of Boy Nancy (2005), narrated by a transgender sailor, his girl and an all-seeing Showman, presents the carnival-esque tales of ‘those born in between'.

The conference focuses on 21st Century feminism and examines a wide range of social, cultural, theoretical and global transitions that have affected the movement's identity, representation, activism and politics.

Places at the conference are still available. For more information visit www.edgehill.ac.uk/feministtransitions