Jeanette Winterson

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Template:Short description Template:Pp-pc Template:Use British English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox writer Jeanette Winterson Template:Post-nominals is an English author.

Her first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was a semi-autobiographical novel about a lesbian growing up in an English Pentecostal community. Other novels explore gender polarities and sexual identity and later ones the relations between humans and technology. She broadcasts and teaches creative writing. She has won a Whitbread Prize for a First Novel, a BAFTA Award for Best Drama, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the E. M. Forster Award and the St. Louis Literary Award, and the Lambda Literary Award twice. She has received an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to literature, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Her novels have been translated into almost 20 languages.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Early life and education

Winterson was born in Manchester and adopted by Constance and John William Winterson on 21 January 1960.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> She grew up in Accrington, Lancashire, and was raised in the Elim Pentecostal Church. She was raised to become a Pentecostal Christian missionary, and she began evangelising and writing sermons at the age of six.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

By the age of 16, Winterson had come out as a lesbian and left home.<ref name=glbtq>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=Jaggi>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=Gold23November>Template:Cite news</ref> Soon after, she attended Accrington and Rossendale College.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> From 1978 to 1981, she supported herself doing odd jobs while reading English at St. Catherine's College, Oxford.<ref name=Jaggi /><ref name=winterson.com>Template:Cite web</ref>

Career

After she moved to London, she took assorted theatre work, including at the Roundhouse,<ref name=Jaggi /> and wrote her debut novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a semi-autobiographical story about a sensitive teenage girl rebelling against convention. One job Winterson applied for was as an editorial assistant at Pandora Press,<ref name="British Council">Template:Cite web</ref> a feminist imprint newly founded in 1983 by Philippa Brewster, and in 1985 Brewster published Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which won the Whitbread Prize for a First Novel.<ref name=Jaggi /><ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Winterson adapted it for television in 1990. Her novel The Passion was set in Napoleonic Europe.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref>

Winterson's subsequent novels explore the boundaries of physicality and the imagination, gender polarities, and sexual identities, and have won several literary awards. Her stage adaptation of The PowerBook in 2002 opened at the Royal National Theatre, London. She also bought a derelict terraced house in Spitalfields, East London, which she refurbished into an occasional flat and a ground-floor shop, Verde's, to sell organic food.<ref name=observer>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In January 2017, she discussed closing the shop when a spike in rateable value, and so business rates, threatened to make the business untenable.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2009, Winterson donated the short story "Dog Days" to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project, covering four collections of UK stories by 38 authors. Her story appeared in the Fire collection.<ref>Ox-Tales Template:Webarchive. Oxfam. Retrieved on 26 August 2011.</ref> She also supported the relaunch of the Bush Theatre in London's Shepherd's Bush. She wrote and performed work for the Sixty Six Books project, based on a chapter of the King James Bible, along with other novelists and poets including Paul Muldoon, Carol Ann Duffy, Anne Michaels and Catherine Tate.<ref>The Sixty Six Project Template:Webarchive. Bush Theatre. Retrieved on 26 August 2011.</ref><ref>Guardian Template:Webarchive "Sixty-Six Books – review" 16 October 2011.</ref>

Winterson's 2012 novella The Daylight Gate, based on the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials, appeared on their 400th anniversary. Its main character, Alice Nutter, is based on the real-life woman of the same name. The Guardian's Sarah Hall describes the work:

"the narrative voice is irrefutable; this is old-fashioned storytelling, with a sermonic tone that commands and terrifies. It's also like courtroom reportage, sworn witness testimony. The sentences are short, truthful – and dreadful.... Absolutism is Winterson's forte, and it's the perfect mode to verify supernatural events when they occur. You're not asked to believe in magic. Magic exists. A severed head talks. A man is transmogrified into a hare. The story is stretched as tight as a rack, so the reader's disbelief is ruptured rather than suspended. And if doubt remains, the text's sensuality persuades."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2012, Winterson succeeded Colm Tóibín as Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester.<ref name=manchester>Template:Cite web</ref>

Her 2019 novel, Frankissstein: A Love Story, was longlisted for the Booker Prize.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref>

In October 2023, Jonathan Cape published Night Side of the River. Suzi Feay, writing for Literary Review, said: "In these enjoyable tales Winterson has ably served the genre, while also sketching some unsettling future directions the ghost story might take".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Awards and recognition

Personal life

Winterson came out as a lesbian at the age of 16.<ref name="glbtq"/> Her 1987 novel The Passion was inspired by her relationship with Pat Kavanagh, her literary agent.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> From 1990 to 2002, Winterson had a relationship with BBC radio broadcaster and academic Peggy Reynolds.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> After that ended, Winterson became involved with theatre director Deborah Warner. In 2015, she married psychotherapist Susie Orbach, author of Fat is a Feminist Issue.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The couple separated in 2019.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Bibliography

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References

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