Exploring Our Past Through Memoirs: In Conversation with Carol Fox and Mary McCabe

Didn't make it to Ringwood's Memoirs Event? No problem. This week, join us for a lively discussion exploring the power of memoirs. Authors of Memoirs of a Feminist Mother and Stirring the Dust respectively, Carol Fox and Mary McCabe discuss their writing journeys, the full lives they've led so far, and the importance of picking your battles!

Memoirs of a Feminist Mother Blurb:

As a committed feminist, Carol Fox has achieved success for many women, but her greatest battle was very personal. Following serious fertility problems, Carol made the positive decision to become a single parent by choice, to have a child while she still could. Refused access to fertility treatment in Scotland she had no choice but to move to London.

Through sheer determination and tenacity, Carol obtained treatment in England in the early 1990s and her daughter was born in 1992, following extensive fertility treatment and battles against judgmental attitudes which appear almost vindictive to us 30 years later. Her story has attracted media coverage, sparking debates on motherhood and the right to be a single parent in the UK.

Stirring the Dust Blurb:

Extraordinary things unfold in Stirring the Dust. A corpse left unburied for fear of infection; a paranormal great-great aunt; bigamous and incestuous marriages; a runaway wife and her gypsy lover. Dramatic episodes in the past are linked with the present. A sense of something missing in events now has its echo in the rich cast of characters standing behind down the generations. Mary McCabe should know the cast in this drama. They are the author’s own family. Her mother’s side (the Gardens) were artisans from Banffshire. Her father’s lineage (the Morrows) came to the Central Belt of Scotland from Argyll at the time of Highland Clearances and worked in ironstone mining for three generations until the early twentieth century.