Join us in conversation with Emma Barnett and Deborah Joseph to celebrate the launch of Emma's new book, Maternity Service, a heartfelt, reassuring and bracingly honest book about the experience of being on maternity leave.
Emma wrote this book live as her experiences were unfolding; in moments snatched while doing her second tour of duty in the faraway land that is maternity leave. She couldn’t believe how much of it she had forgotten from the first time. The book aims to capture how she felt while she still could in a bid to faithfully remember and record it—while throwing a life-line to other women who have been through it or are about to or are trench-deep.
Books will be available for purchase and signing on the night.
Emma Barnett
Emma Barnett is an award-winning broadcaster and journalist. She was named Interviewer of the Year for 2022 at the British Journalism awards and is a presenter on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today Programme, as well as hosting TV interviews and documentaries across the BBC. She has presented programmes that include Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 and Newsnight. She also presented a global interviews programme on Bloomberg TV, interviewing international figures from across the world of politics, sport, entertainment and technology.
Emma pens a bi-weekly newspaper column for the i, and was previously a columnist for the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph, where she was also the Women’s Editor. After the birth of her first child, she wrote Period: It’s about Bloody Time, her first book.
Emma grew up in Manchester, and now lives in London with her husband and their two children.
Deborah Joseph
Deborah Joseph is an award-winning magazine editor and journalist who writes regularly for The Times and Daily Mail. Until recently, she was Editor-in-chief of Glamour magazine where she focused on driving conversations around equality for women and lobbied the government to make deepfake pornography illegal. She was the 2023 Chair of the British Society for Magazine editors and is currently a judge for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
She has three children and two dogs and speaks regularly on work life balance.