Mills College WeeklyThis Semester an accomplished Bay Area novelist and internationally known Virginia Woolf scholar is perfecting her screenplay while working on two additional books at Mills as a visiting scholar in the Women’s Leadership Institute.
Madeline Moore is part of the Women’s Leadership Institute’s Visiting Scholars program, she’s been here for three years and is currently revising a screenplay that is undergoing reviews by a Hollywood producer.
The screenplay is based on her second novel “Whitney’s Antigone,” which in theme with most of her work, expresses Moore’s strong disdain for violence by displaying how strong women can oppose and overcome the oppression of violent men.
It was Moore’s intense passion against violence that attracted her to Virginia Woolf, who is her inspiration for writing. She was always a writer. After studying Woolf, she began writing novels. Moore is the author of “The Short Season Between Two Silences,” a biography on Woolf, which she said has been cited frequently. Moore said she writes because she feels a deep need to correct some of the problems in her own life.
“Writers write to create a universe that corrects the one they can’t correct. I write to bring order to my life.”
Moore has very personal feelings for Woolf, and said the recent Golden Globe winner of the best drama award “The Hours,” a film that pays homage to Woolf, is a good movie, but one that only offers a very one-sided representation of her life.
Also, the movie illustrated a very tragic side of Woolf’s life, but Moore said that Woolf was also very funny, socially adept and ambitious.
In addition to the work she is doing on her screenplay, Moore is also working on two other books, her third novel, “Children’s Crusade,” and a non-fiction piece, titled “Storm.” “A Children’s Crusade,” is a novel about parents yearning for their lost children and the children for their parents. The story is set in 1212, and describes a crusade of a 12-year old boy who helps lead other children escape a band of Israelis who tried to exterminate Jewish and Christian children in Paris. Moore said she is using the historical event to address the much broader subject matter. Moore’s third book, “Storm” discusses violence in America, specifically child and domestic abuse. Moore said that she discusses the topic of violence because she hopes that by identifying the causes of violence through her writing she will be able to help end it.
Moore has been featured as a speaker at a number of Virginia Woolf conferences and has written and published several articles about her.
She added she is interested in working with Mills students. She is available to those interested in literature internships or those in need of a mentor. She will be giving at least two public lectures at Mills and is eager to share her work with students and faculty.
