| Jeanette Winterson | |
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Jeanette Winterson, Warsaw, Poland, 16 February 2005 |
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| Born | 27 August 1959 Manchester, England |
| Occupation | Novelist, journalist, delicatessen owner |
| Nationality | British |
| Period | 1985– |
| Genres | Fiction, children's fiction, journalism, science fiction |
| Notable work(s) | Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit |
| Partner(s) | Peggy Reynolds (1990-2002), Deborah Warner, Susie Orbach |
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www.jeanettewinterson.com |
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Jeanette Winterson OBE (born 27 August 1959) is a British novelist.
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Winterson was born in Manchester and adopted on 21 January 1960.[1] She was raised in Accrington, Lancashire, by Constance and John William Winterson. She was raised in the Elim Pentecostal Church and, intending to become a Pentecostal Christian missionary, she began evangelising and writing sermons at age six.[2][3]
By age 16 Winterson realised she was 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.
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 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.[5]
Winterson was made an officer of Order of the British Empire (OBE) at the 2006 New Year Honours.
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.[6] 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 Paul Muldoon, Carol Ann Duffy, Anne Michaels and Catherine Tate.[7][8]
In 2002, Winterson ended her 12-year relationship with BBC radio broadcaster and academic, Peggy Reynolds.[9] Since then she has been involved with theatre director Deborah Warner and therapist Susie Orbach.[10] Her novel The Passion was inspired by her affair with Pat Kavanagh, her literary agent.[11]