Book launch: The Mare by Angharad Hampshire

Join us for this book launch event where Angharad Hampshire will be in conversation with Stu Hennigan to launch her novel, 'The Mare'.

Content warning - The novel covers difficult and confronting content related to concentration camps and the Holocaust.

The Mare is based on the true story of female concentration camp guard Hermine Braunsteiner, the first person to be extradited from the United States for Nazi war crimes. Hermine was one of a few thousand women to work as a female concentration camp guard. Prisoners nicknamed her 'the Mare' because she kicked people to death. When the camps were liberated, Hermine escaped and fled to Vienna.
Many years later, she met Russell Ryan, an American engineer holidaying in Austria. They fell in love, married and moved to New York, where she lived a quiet life as an adoring housewife, beloved friend and neighbour. No one, not even her husband, knew the truth of her past, until one day a New York Times journalist knocked on their door, blowing their lives apart.
The Mare tells Hermine and Russell's story for the first time in fiction. It explores how an ordinary woman could descend so quickly into evil, examining the role payed by government propaganda, ideology, fear and cognitive dissonance, and asks why her husband chose to stay with her despite learning what she had done.

Angharad Hampshire is a research fellow at York St John University, working on a project run by writing development agency for the North of England, New Writing North. She has previously worked as a radio producer for BBC Radio 4 and the World Service in London, honorary lecturer in journalism at the University of Hong Kong, and regular contributor to the South China Morning Post and Muse Magazine in Hong Kong. She has a Doctor of Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Sydney.

Stu Hennigan is a writer, poet and musician based in Leeds. His book Ghost Signs: Poverty and the Pandemic was shortlisted for Best Non-fiction at the Bookseller’s Association Awards and was listed as one of Blackwell’s books of the year in 2022. His fiction, essays and poetry have been published by 3:AM, Lunate, Lune Journal, Expat Lit and Visual Verse. He works as Senior Librarian for Stock and Reader Development at Leeds Libraries.

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CC/201- Recital Room (2nd floor), Creative Centre, York St John University, Lord Mayor's Walk, York, United Kingdom