Join Natalie Haynes and Bettany Hughes in conversationat WOW UK Festival 2021 on a voyage of discovery to reveal the real stories of women from Greek myths - and why it matters.

This event will be BSL interpreted and captioned.

If you don’t know anything about ancient history - this is for you. The Greek myths are among the world's most important historical building blocks and they have been retold many times - they’re all around us, and are deeply embedded into our culture and stories.

However - rarely is there enough focus on the remarkable women at the heart of these ancient stories. Modern tellers of Greek myth have usually been men, who have fairly consistently shown little interest in telling women's stories - and when they do, women are often painted as sex objects, vengeful, or just plain evil.

From Aphrodite to Pandora, Medusa to Medea and Hera to Helen of Troy - come and learn about their amazing stories, and the sheer injustice in how they are often understood today.

If you'd like to submit any questions for Natalie and Bettany, please email them to hello@thewowfoundation.com with the event title in the subject line. We are looking forward to seeing you at the event.

This event features a performance by a WOW Sounds artist. Don't miss the incredible performance by genre defying artist anaiis whose breakthrough song Nina is a liberation chant and reclamation of freedom.

This event is part of WOW UK Festival 2021, our three week digital programme of groundbreaking In Conversations and interactive workshops. For this year’s festival, we are offering audiences the chance to pay what they can for tickets from £1 upwards. If you’re able to pay a higher ticket price, your contribution will include a donation to help WOW continue its work fighting for gender equality all year-round.

If you want to book to watch all the In Conversations, you can book a WOW UK 2021 Festival Talks Pass for just £25 (or £100 if you'd like to support WOW's work year-round). And don't forget, you have seven days to watch all events on demand.

About the speakers:

Natalie Haynes is the author of six books. Most recently Pandora’s Jar: Women and the Greek Myths (2020) and A Thousand Ships, published by Pan Macmillan in 2019, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020. She has written and recorded six series of Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics for BBC Radio 4. Series Seven will be broadcast in summer 2021.

Professor Bettany Hughes is an award-winning historian, author and broadcaster, who has devoted the last 25 years to the vibrant communication of the past. Her films on histories and culture are regularly watched by over 200 million worldwide. Her most recent book is Venus and Aphrodite: History of a Goddess (2019), published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, currently long-listed for the Runciman Prize. Her Sunday Times best-selling Istanbul A Tale of Three Cities has been translated into twelve languages and was shortlisted for the Runciman Prize, her New York Times Bestseller The Hemlock Cup - Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life was shortlisted for the Writers’ Guild Award and her first book Helen of Troy - Goddess, Princess, Whore was translated into twelve languages. In 2019 she was Chair of the Man Booker Prize for International Fiction.