An Evening With Emma Cowing
ROLL UP! ROLL UP! TUPPENCE A SHOW
‘Welcome to the ladies’ circus. What you see today will thrill and amaze you. You will see women fly. Tumble. Throw themselves from animals and emerge intact. What you see is no less than a miracle...’
Join debut author, Emma Cowing for an evening of conversation about her brand new book, The Show Woman. Inspired by Emma's own family history. Emma’s own Great Aunt Violet was a Show Woman: a brilliant trapeze artist and bareback horse rider, you'll learn all about how Emma penned her incredible circus story.
Hosted by historical fiction author of The Quick and The Dead, Emma Hinds, we'll be serving a selection of circus-themed cocktails for you to sip from your ringside seat in-store.
Included in your ticket is a hardback copy of The Show Woman, a circus-themed cocktail or mocktail and entry to the event.
About The Show Woman
Can you see those sparkly lights of the fairground lit up like a jewel box?
Do you hear the brass bands and the finicky barrel organs? Feel the pickpockets racing through the swell in search of a loose shilling or a stray button? Smell the sweet candy floss mixed with tobacco pipes in the air?
Scotland, 1910: when Lena’s father dies, she decides to sell the carousel her father cared for like a child and is advised to look for a husband, or a job in a factory.
But then flame-haired Violet, known to all in the fairgrounds as 'the greatest trapeze artist that ever lived', suggests they go it alone with their own, all-female act. With her outspoken ways and her refusal to marry, Violet is as much an outcast as Lena. What do they have to lose? Recruiting bareback horse-rider Rosie, on the run from her abusive father, and Carmen whose rainbow ribbons hide the darkness in her past, to join the line-up, the four women form an unbreakable bond.
Thrust into a harsh and dangerous world that treats them with suspicion, disdain and even violence, they must forge their own path in search of freedom, security, and love.
‘I wanted to run away with this all-woman circus. Enthralling’ C.J. COOKE, author of The Book of Witching
‘Beautifully written, engaging plot and thoroughly researched’ STYLIST
Suspenseful, authentic, sexy and uplifting, THE SHOW WOMAN is the ultimate ripping yarn.‘ ERIN KELLY, author of The House of Mirrors
‘A very special debut’ JENNY COLGAN, author of Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop
About Emma Cowing
Emma Cowing is an award-winning journalist and author. She has written for a wide number of publications including The Sunday Times, The Scottish Daily Mail, Guardian Weekend Magazine, Scotland on Sunday and The Scotsman.
Emma is a former Feature Writer of the Year at the Scottish Press Awards, and two-time Interviewer of the Year. She holds an Ochberg Fellowship in Journalism and Trauma at Columbia Journalism School in New York, for her work covering the war in Afghanistan, and its aftermath.
Emma was shortlisted for the 2023 Cheshire Novel Prize, and longlisted for the 2023 Bath Novel Award and Blue Pencil First Novel Award. She lives in Glasgow with her husband Jonathan and their cat, Moses. The Show Woman is her first novel.
About your host: Emma Hinds
Emma is a Queer playwright and author living and working in Manchester. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews. She focuses on historical narratives, female voices, and Queer stories. Emma’s debut novel, The Knowing, is an exploration of female trauma in the vivid and cruel world of the Victorian freak show and is available through Bedford Square Publishing. Emma has been longlisted for the Mslexia Novel Competition twice and was a participant of the Penguin Random House Write Now Scheme in 2018.
Her latest play, PURE, was featured in Turn On festival at Hope Mill Theatre Manchester and she was the recipient of the Artist Development grant at Hope Mill Theatre.