Jeanette Winterson OBE (born 27 August 1959) is a British novelist.
erson was born in Manchester, England and raised Accrington Lancashire by adopted parents Constance and John William Winterson. On track to becoming a Pentecostal Christian missionary, she began evangelising and writing sermons at age six, but by sixteen Winterson declared she was lesbian and left home. She soon after attended Accrington and Rossendale College and supported herself at a variety of odd jobs while earning her bachelors degree in English literature at St Catherine's College, Oxford.
r moving to London, her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published when she was twenty-four years old.
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Quotations
But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.
He doesn't understand I want the freedom to make my own mistakes.
No safety without risk, and what you risk reveals what you value.
Round and round he walked, and so learned a very valuble thing: that no emotion is the final one.
Somewhere between fear and sex passion is. The way there is sudden. The way out is worse.
Here is some advice. If you want to keep your own teeth, make your own sandwiches ....
Described by the author as a comic book with pictures, rather than a second novel.
Encyclopedia
Jeanette Winterson OBE (born 27 August 1959) is a British novelist.
Biography
Early years
Winterson was born in Manchester, England and raised Accrington Lancashire by adopted parents Constance and John William Winterson. On track to becoming a Pentecostal Christian missionary, she began evangelising and writing sermons at age six, but by sixteen Winterson declared she was lesbian and left home. She soon after attended Accrington and Rossendale College and supported herself at a variety of odd jobs while earning her bachelors degree in English literature at St Catherine's College, Oxford.
Career
After moving to London, her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published when she was twenty-four years old. It won the 1985 Whitbread Prize for a First Novel, and was adapted for television by Winterson in 1990, which 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 Royal 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.
Winterson was made an officer of Order of the British Empire (OBE) at the 2006 New Year Honours.
Personal life
In 2000, Winterson's twelve-year relationship ended with BBC radio broadcaster, Peggy Reynolds. Her novel Written on the Body was inspired by an affair with her literary agent, Pat Kavanagh. She is presently involved with the theatre director Deborah Warner.
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)
External links
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