Joanna Miller in conversation with Ali Lowe

Join us for an exclusive event with Joanna Miller as she discusses her debut release, The Eights. Joanna will be Joined by her sister/fellow author, Ali Lowe.

The Eights:

They knew they were changing history.

They didn’t know they would change each other.

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight. They have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming

friendship.

Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Beatrice, politically-minded daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way – and her own friends – for the first time. Socialite Otto fills her room with extravagant luxuries but fears they won’t be enough to distract her from her memories of the war years. And quiet, clever, Marianne, the daughter of a village vicar, arrives bearing a secret she must hide from everyone – even The Eights – if she is to succeed.

But Oxford’s dreaming spires cast a dark shadow: in 1920, misogyny is still rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War are still very real indeed. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time, their friendship will become more important than ever.

Joanna Miller:

Joanna Miller studied English at Exeter College, Oxford and later returned to complete a PGCE in Secondary English at The Department of Educational Studies. After ten years as a teacher and literacy adviser, she set up an award-winning poetry gift business with celebrity clients. Joanna's rhyming verse has been filmed twice by the BBC and in 2015 she won The Poetry Prize, run by Bloomsbury Publishing and the National Literacy Trust. In 2021, Joanna graduated from the Faber Academy, after which she was accepted on the Escalator Talent Development Scheme at The National Centre for Writing. She has recently returned to Oxford to study part-time for a diploma in creative writing. Joanna lives in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire with her husband and their three teenage children.

Ali Lowe:

Ali grew up in the UK, with a notepad and pen in hand. Her older siblings had left home by the time she was ten, so she lived in her imagination, devouring Agatha Christie novels.

She gained a classics degree before moving to London, and then Sydney, to work in print media. In 2019, she wrote The Trivia Night, which became an international bestseller. She now writes full-time, with a cat on her lap.