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Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson

Overview
Jeanette Winterson OBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 (born 27 August 1959) is a British novelist.
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Quotations

But not all dark places need light, I have to remember that.

Round and round he walked, and so learned a very valuable thing: that no emotion is the final one.

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.

She thought of an article she had once seen on mind control. Apparently if there was a person fiendish enough to set about interfering with your life, the only thing you could do was to concentrate hard on someone they were unlikely ever to have heard of called Martin Amis. The particular blankness of this image was guaranteed to protect from any subtle force, but Gloria realised with a sinking heart that it was too late now.

Page 22.

Bask in it. In spite of what the monks say, you can meet God without getting up early. You can meet God lounging in the pew. The hardship is a man-made device because man cannot exist without passion.

Somewhere between fear and sex passion is. The way there is sudden. The way out is worse.

I'm telling you stories. Trust me.

He doesn't understand I want the freedom to make my own mistakes.

My passion for her, even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love. The one is about you, the other about someone else.

Encyclopedia
Jeanette Winterson OBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 (born 27 August 1959) is a British novelist.

Early years


Winterson was born in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

 and adopted
Adoption
Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...

 on 21 January 1960. She was raised in Accrington
Accrington
Accrington is a town in Lancashire, within the borough of Hyndburn. It lies about east of Blackburn, west of Burnley, north of Manchester city centre and is situated on the mostly culverted River Hyndburn...

, Lancashire, by Constance and John William Winterson. She was raised in the Elim Pentecostal Church
Elim Pentecostal Church
The Elim Pentecostal Church is a UK-based Pentecostal Christian denomination.-History:George Jeffreys , a Welshman, founded the Elim Pentecostal Church in Monaghan, Ireland in 1915. Jeffreys was an evangelist with a Welsh Congregational church background. He was converted at age 15 during the...

 and, intending to become a Pentecostal Christian missionary
Mission (Christian)
Christian missionary activities often involve sending individuals and groups , to foreign countries and to places in their own homeland. This has frequently involved not only evangelization , but also humanitarian work, especially among the poor and disadvantaged...

, she began evangelising and writing sermons at age six.

By age 16 Winterson realised she was a lesbian and left home. She soon after attended Accrington and Rossendale College
Accrington and Rossendale College
Accrington and Rossendale College is a further education college based in Accrington, Lancashire, England.- The College :Accrington & Rossendale College is an award winning further education College which specialises in vocational education....

 and supported herself at a variety of odd jobs while reading for a degree in English
English studies
English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...

 at St Catherine's College, Oxford
St Catherine's College, Oxford
St Catherine's College, often called Catz, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its motto is Nova et Vetera...

.

Career


After moving to London, her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a novel by Jeanette Winterson published in 1985, which she subsequently adapted into a BBC television drama...

, won the 1985 Whitbread Prize for a First Novel, and was adapted for television
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (TV serial)
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit was a critically acclaimed 1990 BBC television drama, directed by Beeban Kidron. Jeanette Winterson wrote the screenplay, adapting her semi-autobiographical first novel of the same name . The BBC produced and screened three episodes, running to a total of 2 hours and...

 by Winterson in 1990. This in turn won the BAFTA
British Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...

 Award for Best Drama. She won the 1987 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
John Llewellyn Rhys Prize
The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize is a literary prize awarded annually for the best work of literature by an author from the Commonwealth aged 35 or under, written in English and published in the United Kingdom...

 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
Royal National Theatre
The Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...

, London. She also bought a derelict terraced house
Terraced house
In architecture and city planning, a terrace house, terrace, row house, linked house or townhouse is a style of medium-density housing that originated in Great Britain in the late 17th century, where a row of identical or mirror-image houses share side walls...

 in Spitalfields
Spitalfields
Spitalfields is a former parish in the borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London, near to Liverpool Street station and Brick Lane. The area straddles Commercial Street and is home to many markets, including the historic Old Spitalfields Market, founded in the 17th century, Sunday...

, east London, which she refurbished into a flat as a pied-a-terre and a ground-floor shop, Verde's, to sell organic food
Organic food
Organic foods are foods that are produced using methods that do not involve modern synthetic inputs such as synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, do not contain genetically modified organisms, and are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical food additives.For the...

.

Winterson was made an officer of Order of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 (OBE) at the 2006 New Year Honours
New Year Honours 2006
The New Year Honours 2006 for the Commonwealth realms were announced on 31 December 2005, to celebrate the year passed and mark the beginning of 2006....

.

In 2009, she donated the short story Dog Days to Oxfam's Ox-Tales
Ox-Tales
Ox-Tales refers to four anthologies of short stories written by 38 of the UK's best known authors. All the authors donated their stories to Oxfam...

 project comprising four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Winterson's story was published in the Fire collection. She also supported the relaunch of the Bush Theatre
Bush Theatre
The Bush Theatre is based in Shepherd's Bush, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It was established in 1972 above The Bush public house by Brian McDermott, and has since become one of the most celebrated new writing theatres in the world. An intimate venue renowned for its close-up...

 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 Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon
Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published over thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. S. Eliot Prize. He held the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 - 2004. At Princeton University he is both the Howard G. B. Clark ’21 Professor in the Humanities and...

, Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy
Carol Ann Duffy, CBE, FRSL is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is Professor of Contemporary Poetry at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Britain's poet laureate in May 2009...

, Anne Michaels
Anne Michaels
-Background:Anne Michaels was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1958. Michaels attended Vaughan Road Academy and then later the University of Toronto, where she is an adjunct faculty in the Department of English. Her first book, The Weight of Oranges , a volume of poetry, was awarded the Commonwealth...

 and Catherine Tate
Catherine Tate
Catherine Tate is an English actress, writer, and comedian. She has won numerous awards for her work on the sketch comedy series The Catherine Tate Show as well as being nominated for an International Emmy Award and four BAFTA Awards...

.

Personal life


In 2002, Winterson ended her 12-year relationship with BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 radio broadcaster and academic, Peggy Reynolds. Since then she has been involved with theatre director Deborah Warner
Deborah Warner
Deborah Warner CBE is a British director of theatre and opera known for her interpretations of the works of Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Georg Büchner, and Henrik Ibsen, and for her long-term working relationship with the Irish actress Fiona Shaw.-Early years:Warner was born in Oxfordshire,...

 and therapist Susie Orbach
Susie Orbach
Susie Orbach is a psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer, and social critic from London, UK.-Background:Orbach was born in London, in 1946, and was brought up in Chalk Farm, north London, the child of Jewish parents, British MP Maurice Orbach and an American mother...

. Her novel The Passion was inspired by her affair with Pat Kavanagh
Pat Kavanagh (agent)
Patricia Olive Kavanagh was a British literary agent.Kavanagh was born in 1940 in Durban, South Africa, where her father was a journalist. Her half-sister, Julie Kavanagh, is a ballet critic. Her half-brother, Michael O'Brien is a geologist for AngloGold Ashanti in Johannesburg...

, her literary agent
Literary agent
A literary agent is an agent who represents writers and their written works to publishers, theatrical producers and film producers and assists in the sale and deal negotiation of the same. Literary agents most often represent novelists, screenwriters and major non-fiction writers...

.

External links