Wendy Perriam is an English novelist and graduate of the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 who started writing at the age of five and wrote her first novel at eleven. Perriam then went silent as she struggled through a long period of depression, having been expelled from her Catholic school

Catholic school

Catholic schools are maintained parochial schools or education ministries of the Catholic Church. the Church operates the world's largest non-governmental school system...

 for heresy and told she was in Satan's power. Many of her early novels explore the abuses and, conversely, the great attractions of Catholicism

Catholicism

Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....

. Perriam's work is also renowned for its explicit sexual content.

In 2002, she won the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award for Tread softly.

Perriam has appeared frequently on television and radio, and was once a regular contributor to the radio series Stop the Week

Stop The Week

Stop the Week was a long running BBC Radio 4 discussion programme chaired by Robert Robinson which ran from 1974–1992-Origins:The BBC Radio's Current Affairs Department decided that it wanted a programme that would act as a bookend to Monday morning's Start the Week with Richard Baker, which had...

and Fourth Column. Her work has been critically acclaimed for its psychological insight and for its power to disturb as well as divert. Described by the Sunday Telegraph

Sunday Telegraph

The Sunday Telegraph is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961. It is the sister paper of The Daily Telegraph, but is run separately with a different editorial staff, although there is some cross-usage of stories...

 as "one of the most interesting unsung novelists of her generation", Perriam published her 22nd work, Broken Places, in August, 2010.

Personal life

Perriam has been twice married and has a daughter and two step-children. She lives in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

.

Publications

Novels

• Absinthe for Elevenses
• Cuckoo
• After Purple
• Born of Woman
• The Stillness the Dancing
• Sin City
• Devils, for a Change
• Fifty-Minute Hour
• Bird Inside
• Michael, Michael
• Breaking and Entering
• Coupling
• Second Skin
• Lying
• Tread Softly
• Broken Places

Short Story Collections

• Dreams, Demons and Desire
• Virgin in the Gym
• Laughter Class
• The Biggest Female in the World
• Little Marvel
• The Queen's Margarine

External links