My Body, Your Agenda

There is a battle for women’s bodies and they don’t seem to be winning.  So how do we change positions on the battlefield?Who are we fighting? Is literature the place to fight back?

Brighton Book Festival invites you to join us with world class writers as they look at women’s bodies through literature and the battle to have authority and autonomy over them.

Uttama Kirit Patel is a writer and magazine founder and editor, and has lived in twelve cities  across three continents. She holds an MPhil in Psychology from the University of Cambridge, has been a semi-finalist in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest, and was nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers.

Marley Henry is a UK registered midwife, author, speaker and hypnobirthing instructor living in the South of England. Her Debut book Midwife Marleys’s Guide For Everyone was released in 2022, and she is the co-author of Davina McCalls new book Birthing, publishing in September 2025.

Over the past 16 years, via the NHS and privately, she has supported thousands of women and their families to prepare for parenthood, and cared for a large number through their pregnancy, labour, and postnatally. She is a huge advocate for informed choice, and has a particular passion for supporting marginalised groups navigating pregnancy and birth.

Marley currently mentors expectant parents all over the world, and also creates free pregnancy and birth related information on social media via @midwifemarley

Award winning Brighton poet, AFLO. the poet is an activist and academic who embraces creative expression to disrupt the status quo and inspire social change, using poetry as a vehicle to address hard-hitting topics, particularly racism and mental health, primarily speaking from her lived experiences. Currently an in-house artist for Brighton Dome, she is a significant force directing change in Brighton’s creative scenes and continues to sow seeds across the country.