Journalist Nancy Richards chats with author Katherine J. Chen about her latest book, Joan: A Novel of Joan of Arc.

About The Book:
Girl. Warrior. Heretic. Saint? France is mired in a losing war against England. Its people are starving. Its king is in hiding. Yet out of the chaos, an unlikely heroine emerges.

Reckless, steel-willed and brilliant, Joan has survived a childhood steeped in both joy and violence to claim an extraordinary - and fragile - position at the head of the French army. The battlefield and the royal court are full of dangers and Joan finds herself under suspicion from all sides - as well as under threat from her own ambition.

With unforgettably vivid characters and propulsive storytelling, Joan is a thrilling epic, a triumph of historical fiction, and a feminist celebration of one remarkable - and remarkably real - woman who left an indelible mark on history.

About Katherine:
Katherine J. Chen is the author of the novel Mary B. Her work has been published in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, and the historical fiction anthology Stories from Suffragette City. She received her MFA from Boston University, where she was a senior teaching fellow and awarded the Florence Engel Randall Fiction Prize.

About Nancy:
Nancy Richards is an independent journalist with a good few years experience on radio and in print. As a radio presenter, areas of specialisation included shows on literature, the environment and ‘women’s issues’. In print she’s covered environment matters, books and literature, lifestyle, travel and décor amongst other things. She has a podcast called Books Stories People and is founder of an NPO: Woman Zone and The Women’s Library at the Artscape Theatre Centre in Cape Town. She also oversees Woman Zone’s podcast series covering books by women writers and other stories. She’s authored/co-authored Beautiful Homes: as featured in Fairlady magazine; Woman Today – 50 years of South African women on radio and Being a Woman in Cape Town: Telling your story. She is a speaker, media trainer and board member of NPO Soil for Life. Born in London, she is based in Cape Town