MAKING HISTORY
Wearing her slippers and tracksuit bottoms when we speak, Kate Mosse claims to be ‘down to earth and totally normal’. And talking to her, she completely is. And yet it feels fitting, somehow, to be writing up this interview on International Women’s Day, because you’d be hard pressed to think of anyone who has been a greater champion for women’s writing than Kate Mosse – bestselling author and founder of The Women’s Prize.
Set during the 16th century Wars of Religion that saw the persecution of the Protestant Huguenots, Kate’s latest novel The City of Tears is the follow-up to 2018’s The Burning Chambers. Absorbing and harrowing, it’s a historical novel that centres on the devastation caused when a child goes missing in the midst of a massacre. The main character, Minou, is herself a writer.
‘All of us who write know that a part of it is about making sense of the world,’ says Kate. ‘There is plenty of evidence that in the Huguenot community you could be a woman writer and be published. In the first place I made Minou the daughter of a bookseller, because after the dissolution of the monasteries booksellers started to flourish. And then Minou would have access to these things and she would want to put things down. She has things to say.’
Putting a historical woman who writes centre stage is characteristic of Kate, who has spent her career devoting her considerable energy to increasing the visibility of women writers. ‘I like to
