Open the Door 2020

Project Pages

A silhouette of an open door with green leaves emerging through it.
Open the Door logo by Zhaneta Zhekova

Open the Door 2020 Online Events

Top images, left to right, created by: Zhaneta Zhekova, Eirinn Reay, Ana Vich. Bottom images, left to right, created by: Rhona Forbes, Tessa Minshull, Eilidh Smith

A close-up of a microphone that's pointed towards the camera

Open the Door 2020: Digital Poetry Slam

Digital Poetry Slam Round 1 Our Digital Poetry Slam is now closed for entries! Are you a spoken word warrior? Do you have performance poetry pulsing through your veins? Are […]

A phone filming a woman who is standing against a white wall

Open the Door 2020: Calm Slam

Our Calm Slam is for every woman* who loves poetry but likes the quiet life.

Illustration of imagined image of Maria Firmina dos Reis, set against a backdrop of white and yellow flowers
Illustration of imagined image of Brazilian author Maria Firmina dos Reis by artist João Gabriel, courtesy of Flup

Maria Firmina dos Reis

by Giovanna MacKenna MARIA FIRMINA DOS REIS was born in 1825 on the island of São Luís in Maranhão, Brazil. Differing accounts suggest she was the daughter of a white […]

A worn, black and white photo of Jessie Kesson looking at the camera. She has short hair and is smiling.

Jessie Kesson

by Giovanna MacKenna JESSIE McDONALD was born illegitimately in an Elgin slum, near Inverness, in 1916. She was taken from her much-loved mother – a domestic servant who turned to […]

Illustration of Wangari Maathai, wearing a yellow dress and headdress, in prfoile against a background of leaves

Wangari Maathai

by Giovanna MacKenna WANGARI MUTA was born in 1940 in Kenya’s Central Highlands, an area renowned for its natural beauty and abundance.  Unusually for girls at that time, she went […]

What is Open the Door?

Never before has Scotland’s literary scene been as energised, bold, and international as it is today, and a large part of that is thanks to the brilliance of contemporary women writers. It seemed only right to celebrate this achievement of women writers with a festival of their own and so Open the Door was born in 2017.

Open the Door is unique; it is a festival that breaks down the barriers between writers and readers and generates poignant, important discussions. The title of the festival comes from Catherine Carswell’s classic work of fiction and we want to create open doors into the worlds of reading and writing through every event and conversation.

Digital

Every second year, we invite the world to Open the Door by hosting the festival entirely online. Here we have outlined our festival themes for 2020 and ways in which you can get involved.

Festival Theme

For 2020, Open the Door has a special focus on environmental and ecofeminist ideas. Women have written extensively, both factually and creatively, about the world around them and the landscapes that we shape and that have shaped us. We hope to use this festival as an opportunity to celebrate these words and highlight the importance of thinking widely about our environment and our changing world.

Festival Dates

The online festival will run from Monday 18th May to Friday 22nd May 2020.

During this week we want the online world to be abuzz with conversations around environmental issues – our 2020 festival theme – and what it is to be a woman writer and reader.

Logo of Feminist Book Fortnight. Inital letters of organisation are used. The letters are embolded in lower case in black. A female gender symbol is seen hooked around the 'b'. The symbol is coloured purple.

Open the Door 2020 is part of Feminist Book Fortnight.