Pip Williams’ best-selling novel The Dictionary of Lost Words tells the story of motherless Esme who spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers gather words for the first Oxford English Dictionary. Over time she discovers words relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. The novel won numerous awards including the 2021 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year. In Williams’ latest novel, The Bookbinder of Jericho, her talent for historical research and beautiful storytelling shines through in the story of twin sisters who work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho. She discusses who gets to make knowledge, who gets to access it, and what is lost when it is withheld with Sonya Wilson. SUN, 21 MAY 2023, 1:00pm – 2:00pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.

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