A Room and a Voice: Performance Edition Adapted from A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf Adapted by Querida Funck

What does it mean to claim space for your story?

In this Performance Edition of Virginia Woolf's seminal essay, A Room and a Voice reimagines her call for creative freedom and intellectual independence through the lens of performance and spoken storytelling. Querida Funck preserves the spirit and arguments of the original while reshaping the language for clarity, rhythm, and accessibility.

This edition goes beyond the text: it includes guidance for performers and narrators, suggestions for pacing and vocal interpretation, and contextual insights that connect Woolf's reflections to modern audiences. The result is a book that can be read privately, studied in classrooms, or performed aloud on stage or in community spaces.

Woolf's insights-on gender, authorship, and the structures that silence or uplift-resonate as powerfully today as they did nearly a century ago. By blending adaptation with performance tools, this edition honors her voice while inviting readers and performers alike to ask: Who gets to create? What holds us back? And how do we make room for our own voices?

Part of the True Voice Shorts series from Lemery House Press-timeless works adapted with care and purpose for contemporary reflection and performance.

Autorentext

"From a very early age, I was taught that there were stories in art, and an art to telling stories."

Querida grew up in Monroe, Wisconsin (USA). She learned to draw from her mother who was an accomplished landscape artist, and began selling portraits while still a teenager.

She turned to cartooning as a college student and wrote home in comic strip format with "The Adventures of Jacky and Sir" using the family dogs as a substitute for her adventures. While home on break, she created pen and watercolor fashion plates for a local boutique in Monroe, Wisconsin.

After college, she became known as "Sally" the pen-named political cartoonish of "Two Cents Worth" for the Wisconsin Counties Magazine. Her picture books was "The Christmas Leprechaun," written as a Christmas present for her father-in-law and his grandchildren. Years later, she would study with Caldecott Medal Winner, David McLiman, and venture into creating stories for her own grandchildren.