How did Viking women live, love and die? How can we encounter them as flesh-and-blood beings with fears and feelings - not just as names in sagas or runes carved into stone?

Lisa Hannett is an award-winning Canadian Australian writer and academic. While completing her PhD in Old Norse Icelandic literature, Lisa began writing short speculative fiction imbued with the flavour of Norse myth and legend. She has had over 75 short stories published and her work has been consistently reprinted in Year's Best anthologies in Australia, Canada and the US. She has won four Aurealis Awards, including Best Collection for her first book, Bluegrass Symphony (2011). Her first novel, Lament for the Afterlife (2015), won the Australian National Science Fiction Award for 'Best Novel'. Her most recent collection of short stories is Songs for Dark Seasons (2020). In 2020, Lisa was awarded a grant from Flinders University (Adelaide, Australia) to research the lives of Viking Age women, where is also an Associate Professor in Creative Writing. In 2015, she received the Vice Chancellor's Award for Research for her work on the medieval Icelandic sagas. Lisa is a regular reviewer for The Australian Book Review and is a frequent guest on ABC Radio's 'Book of the Week' segment with David Bevan. She's spoken about Viking Age food on the 'Acts of Kitchen' podcast and on ABC Radio's 'Afternoon Drive' program with Jules Schiller. She's discussed Vikings in popular culture with Deb Tribe for ABC Radio's 'Saturday Mornings' program. Her article 'The Politics of Retelling Norse Mythology' in The Atlantic (Feb 2017) reached over 500,000 readers.