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Women of 1000

New Illustration: Paraskevi

Published 3 months ago • 2 min read

Recommended listening: Kassia: Byzantine Hymns of the First Female Composer​

Paraskevi

A storm threatened to shipwreck everyone on board this merchant vessel, but one passenger remained calm. She was a young, rather sickly woman named Paraskevi. Fresh from a life as a hermit in the Jordan desert, she was on her way home to Byzantium to live out the last few years of her life. As a girl, she'd run away from home, defying her parents to become an ascetic and a pilgrim. Now, the storm meant she might never see her homeland again, but Paraskevi had faith that God would bring them through the tempest. If legends are to be believed, that's exactly what happened...

In other Women of 1000 news...

Queer History Book Kickstarter

The Kickstarter for the queer history art book I'm in, We've Always Been Here, has now launched! I'm one of the artists featured in this multicultural LGBTQ+ art book. Check it out now to support the project, with tiers including all sorts of cool queer historical merch! There are so many incredible artists contributing with a huge variety of cultures represented.

New Random Story Button

Have you ever wanted to browse the Women of 1000 website but aren't sure where to start? Well, you can let fate decide by clicking the new Random Story button on the page The Women, accessible from the header menu on the website. Thanks to some of the people involved in the Tapling Zines project for helping me figure out the coding. It's like spinning the globe and letting your finger fall somewhere random!

Women's History Month

Happy Women's History Month! Appropriately, March is also Endometriosis Awareness Month. As some of you might know, I was finally diagnosed with endometriosis last year after twenty years of symptoms. Endometriosis is a painful disease that affects 1 out of 10 people born with a uterus. In the UK, it takes an average of 9 years for diagnosis and 11 years for people of colour. If you're looking for a charity to support this Women's History Month, I highly recommend Endometriosis UK. They helped me out so much in the journey to my diagnosis.

Coming Up Next

I've just downloaded a bunch of articles about women in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. Archaeologists have done a ton of research about women buried in San Pedro de Atacama around the year 1000, so I'll be digging into that. (Pun not intended...!) I've also been taking notes from the book Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, which has given me several different ideas. We'll see who I draw next!

Thanks for reading, and see you next time!

Women of 1000

HI, I'm Meg! I'm the artist and researcher behind Women of 1000. When you subscribe to my newsletter, you will get stories in your inbox around once a month about women who lived in the year 1000, each one highlighted by an original illustration.

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