S1 Ep4: Tolkien's Pipe: Maps and Fantasy with Roz Kaveney

What's Your Map?

Content warning: this episode contains references to sexual assault

In this episode, our host Jerry Brotton is joined by writer and pioneering LBGTQ+ rights activist Roz Kaveney. Roz is best known for her cultural critiques, poetry, fantasy writing, and editing.
From Tolkien's draft map of Rohan from The Lord of the Rings, Jerry and Roz launch into a discussion about the importance of fantasy, adventure, and never giving up – no matter the odds and no matter the times that we live in.

To read more information about the map as it is discussed, go to: https://oculi-mundi.com/podcast

Roz is a regular contributor to the Guardian and The Times Literary Supplement and a core member of the Midnight Rose collective, which produced fantasy anthologies for Penguin Books. Among other works, she edited Tales from The Forbidden Planet and its sequel. Her novel Tiny Pieces of Skull won the 2016 Best Trans Fiction Lambda Literary Award. In 1972, as part of its TV/TS Drag Queen Group, Roz co-authored the ‘trans manifesto’ published by the UK Gay Liberation Front, and was part of the first London Pride march.

In What’s Your Map? we speak to people who live, love and work with maps - making, preserving, interpreting, and being inspired by them. In each episode, we ask our guest to unfold a map that is special to them, and explore the stories attached to it.

Jerry Brotton is a British historian with a specialist interest in maps. He is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary University of London and is a regular on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 3.

What’s Your Map? is an Oculi Mundi exploration, produced by Emily Uchida Finch of Whistledown Productions.

Instagram: @oculimundimaps
Website: https://oculi-mundi.com/