Jeanette Winterson
Early years
Winterson was born in Manchester and adopted by Constance and John William Winterson on 21 January 1960.[1] She grew up in Accrington, Lancashire, and was raised in the Elim Pentecostal Church. Intending to become a Pentecostal missionary, she began evangelising and writing sermons at age six.[2][3]
By the age of 16 Winterson had identified as a lesbian and left home.[4] She soon after attended Accrington and Rossendale College, and supported herself at a variety of odd jobs while reading for a degree in English at St Catherine's College, Oxford.[5][6]
Career
After moving to London, her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, won the 1985 Whitbread Prize for a First Novel, and was adapted for television by Winterson in 1990. This in turn won the BAFTA Award for Best Drama. She won the 1987 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for The Passion, a novel set in Napoleonic Europe.
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 National Theatre, London. She also bought a derelict terraced house in Spitalfields, east London, which she refurbished into a flat as a pied-a-terre and a ground-floor shop, Verde's, to sell organic food.[7]
Winterson received an OBE in the 2006 New Year Honours "For services to literature".[8]
In 2009, she donated the short story Dog Days to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project comprising four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Winterson's story was published in the Fire collection.[9] She also supported the relaunch of the Bush Theatre in London's Shepherd's Bush. She wrote and performed work for the Sixty Six project, based on a chapter of the King James Bible, along with other novelists and poets including Carol Ann Duffy.[10][11]
Personal life
In 2002, Winterson ended her 12-year relationship with BBC radio broadcaster and academic, Peggy Reynolds.[12] Since then she has been involved with theatre director Deborah Warner and therapist Susie Orbach.[13] Her novel The Passion was inspired by her affair with Pat Kavanagh, her literary agent.[14]
Bibliography
- Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985)
- Boating for Beginners (1985)
- Fit For The Future: The Guide for Women Who Want to Live Well (1986)
- The Passion (1987)
- Sexing the Cherry (1989)
- Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit: the script (1990)
- Written on the Body (1992)
- Art & Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd (1994)
- Great Moments in Aviation: the script (1995)
- Art Objects (1995)
- Gut Symmetries (1997)
- The World and Other Places]] (1998)
- The PowerBook (2000)
- The King of Capri (2003)
- Lighthousekeeping (2004)
- Weight (2005)
- Tanglewreck (2006)
- The Stone Gods (2007)
- The Battle of the Sun (2009)
- Ingenious (2009)
- The Lion, The Unicorn and Me: The Donkey's Christmas Story (2009)
- Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (2011)
- The Daylight Gate (2012)
References
- ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/28/jeanette-winterson-all-about-my-mother "Jeanette Winterson: all about my mother" The Guardian 29 October 2011
- ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2000/sep/02/fiction.jeanettewinterson Libby Brooks, "Power surge" The Guardian 2 September 2000
- ↑ http://www.springerlink.com/content/grn602ql627005wx/ International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies, Volume 6, Number 4. SpringerLink. Retrieved on 26 August 2011.
- ↑ http://www.glbtq.com/literature/winterson_j.html Patricia Juliana Smith "Winterson, Jeanette (b. 1959)" glbtq Encyclopedia 4 July 2006
- ↑ http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=207 Winterson profile
- ↑ http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/4288955.Amazon_sorry_for_book_sales_error_which_hit_Accrington_author/ Lancashire Telegraph "Amazon sorry for book sales error which hit Accrington author" 14 April 2009
- ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jun/25/jeanettewinterson Kate Kellaway, "If I Was a Dog, I'd Be a Terrier" The Observer 25 June 2006
- ↑ London Gazette 57855 31 December 2005, page=13
- ↑ http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/content/books/books_oxtales.html Ox-Tales. Oxfam.
- ↑ http://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/sixtysix/ The Sixty Six Project]. Bush Theatre.
- ↑ [http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011/oct/16/sixty-six-books-review?INTCMP=SRCH Guardian "Sixty-Six Books – review" 16 October 2011
- ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/may/29/fiction.jeanettewinterson Maya Jaggi, "Saturday Review: Profile: Jeanette Winterson" The Guardian '29 May 2004
- ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/22/jeanette-winterson-thought-of-suicide Stuart Jeffries, "Jeanette Winterson: 'I thought of suicide'" The Guardian 22 February 2010
- ↑ http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article5014564.ecel Dipesh Gadher "Lesbian novelist Jeanette Winterson planned last visit to dying ex-lover" The Sunday Times 26 October 2008
