Virginia Woolf did things differently. She could describe a love affair by watching its effect on plates and forks in a restaurant. She could evoke the balminess of a summer evening simply through the rhythm of a conversation. She could range through life’s possibilities while peering at a mark on the wall. Alexandra Harris will explore some of the small changes of perspective that make Woolf’s fiction continually surprising, and celebrate some of the literary essays in which we discover Woolf as a pioneering reader as well as a great modern writer. Alexandra is the author of Romantic Moderns (which won both the Somerset Maugham and Guardian First Book Awards), Virginia Woolf and Modernism on Sea. This event will provide a rare chance to lift the veil of history and peer into one of the most exquisitely furnished minds in British writing. Tickets available from the Manchester Literature Festival website or 0843 208 0500.