'Every family has shadow people, the ones who slipped out of the story too soon, leaving a blank space where they should have been. In my father's family that person was his sister Kathleen.'

A Dress for Kathleen began life as a piece of textile art – a hand-embroidered Irish linen dress - honouring the short life of a writer and textile artist's teenaged aunt, Kathleen Hutchinson, who died cycling home from her first job in a linen mill in the early months of World War II.

The story has grown from a life reimagined in stitch into a book that explores family, making and the threads that connect the past and present in our lives. In the process, Heather Richardson also tells the stories of Kathleen's parents and their lives together in rural Northern Ireland in the first half of the 20th Century.

Join us at The Box - Arts Central Milton Keynes' new events venue - as Heather shares the story not just of Kathleen and of the book but also of the dress, which will you be able to see in-person as part of this unique event.

About Heather Richardson
Heather Richardson has published two historical novels: Magdeburg (2010, Lagan Press) and Doubting Thomas (2017, Vagabond Voices). Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in journals in the UK, Ireland and Australia, and her textile art has been exhibited at the International Linen Biennale (Lisburn, 2018) and at the F.E. McWilliam Gallery (Banbridge, 2019).

She is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at the Open University, and lives in Belfast.