Three of the country's top women writers are to reveal how they have been inspired by the Bronte sisters.

Booker Prize nominee Michele Roberts, author, critic and biographer Stevie Davies and award winner Patricia Duncker will tell of their love of the Brontes in the village where the sisters - Emily, Charlotte and Anne - found their own inspiration.

They have agreed to form a panel to explore the power of the Brontes on the invitation of Bronte Parsonage Museum deputy director Andrew McCarthy.

It is part of the Haworth museum's contemporary arts programme, which aims to show how the Brontes continue to influence artists, writers and film makers up to the present day.

The three sisters all died young. Charlotte, who wrote Jane Eyre, outlived all the five children, dying in 1855 aged 39, in pregnancy. Emily, author of Wuthering Heights, died aged 30 in 1848 and her sister Anne, author of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, died the following year, aged 29.

Mr McCarthy said the literary event was a coup for the museum because they were three of the leading British feminist writers.

"The Brontes' influence on other writers has been profound and it's wonderful to have contemporary writers of such prominence here in Haworth to talk about the Brontes in relation to their work," he said.

"They are hugely talented and this is a rare opportunity to hear what some of our best contemporary writers have to say about their literary forebears."

Patricia Duncker is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and her latest novel is called Miss Webster and Cherif.

She said: "I first visited Haworth with my aunt, the late Patricia Beer, who was giving the annual Bronte lecture in the church.

"Her topic was Transvestism in the Novels of Charlotte Bronte'. I was transfixed, not only by her lecture which was really rather shocking, but by the place, the cold, even in summer, the moors behind the house and strange intimacy of the parsonage.

"I have returned many times since then. These women were an inspiration to me - as writers and as survivors, writing against all the odds."

The event will take place on Wednesday, March 7, at 7.30pm in West Lane Baptist Chapel, Haworth.

Tickets cost £6.50 and include admission to the Bronte Parsonage Museum. To book telephone (01535) 640194 or e-mail andrew.mccarthy@bronte.org.uk

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