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Following the relaunch of our paid, three-month internship scheme, we are incredibly pleased to introduce Lola Downes who joins us during the busy Frankfurt season.

Lola graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA degree in English in 2020 and stayed to pursue her MPhil in American Literature the following year. Her dissertation research was titled ‘Fighting B(l)ack: Reclaiming the Theatre from Lynching Violence’, and focused upon texts such as Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman and Angeline Weld Grimké’s Rachel in order to explore how African American women actively deconstructed the ‘theatre/lynching alliance’ through their playwriting between 1915-1930.

Earlier this year she accompanied Phlox Books to the 2021 Wilderness festival as a bookseller and began an administrative volunteer position with Beards and Books, an educational company which seeks to provide literary services with an African and Caribbean emphasis for children and young people.

She really enjoys books which examine race and femininity in the contemporary world. Her favourite book of all time is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah; more recent highlights include Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet and, her current read, Nick Bradley’s The Cat and the City.