Photo: supplied
Australian writer and social researcher Pip Williams' first novel, The Dictionary of Lost Words, was published just as the world locked down due to covid, and became an international best seller.
It tells the story of motherless Esme who spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers gather words for the first Oxford English Dictionary.
Over time she discovers words relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded.
She's just published a companion book ,The Bookbinder of Jericho, which is the story of twin sisters who work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho.
Pip Williams was a social researcher with dozens of peer reviewed academic papers in the fields of psychology, sociology, public health, medicine, work and family, and community development.
But a few years ago she got fed up with academia, and "the only logical thing to do was give it up and drag the whole family to the other side of the world to work as labourers on organic farms."
That adventure was documented in a previous book One Italian Summer. Pip Williams will be appearing at the Auckland Writers Festival next month.
