Rebecca Abrams

Rebecca Abrams
Rebecca will speak about her recent biography of the remarkable 13th century Jewish moneylender Licoricia of WInchester: Power and Prejudice in medieval England, described by historian Simon Sebag Montefiore as & ;totally fascinating, tragic and unforgettable.' How do we reconstruct the lives of Jewish women whose existence survives chiefly in dry legal and financial records? How far is it possible to imaginatively inhabit Jewish experience set so far in the past? Post-Holocaust, how do we navigate the distance between modern antisemitism and anti-Jewish prejudice in the medieval world?
Rebecca Abrams teaches on the Masters in Creative Writing at Oxford University and is a writing mentor for the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. She is the author of seven works of fiction and non-fiction, including Licoricia of Winchester: Power and Prejudice in Medieval England (2022) and The Jewish Journey: 4000 years in 22 objects (2017), and is the co-editor of Jewish Treasures From Oxford Libraries (2020), which was long-listed for the 2021 Wingate Literary Prize. Her historical novel, Touching Distance, was shortlisted for the McKitterick Prize for Literature and won the MJA Open Book Award for Medical Fiction. She is also the author of three plays, including All Of Us, which premiered in New Zealand in 2023.