Celia Brayfield

Celia Brayfield is an English author, journalist, and cultural commentator. She was born in London in 1945.^[1]

Career

Following her childhood role model, Robert Louis Stevenson, Celia decided to begin her writing career as a journalist and joined the Sixties magazine " Nova " ^[2] as a trainee sub-editor. She progressed to "The Observer" as assistant to the women's editor, moved to the "Evening Standard", hired as a media columnist by Simon Jenkins in 1974. In 1982 she moved to "The Times" as a television critic, and continues to contribute frequently to that newspaper's op-ed and books pages. The birth of her daughter Chloe in 1980 provided the final spur to Celia's ambition to become a novelist. Her Fleet Street experience of celebrity culture led to her first book as sole author, Glitter:the Truth About Fame, a non-fiction study commissioned by the legendary feminist editor Carmen Callil at Chatto & Windus. Shortly afterwards Callil commissioned her first novel, Pearls, the first of three tremendously successful and highly controversial genre bestsellers with strong feminist themes. From the mid-1990s Celia progressed to novels of a more literary character, mostly contemporary comedies focused on specific social issues. Her later novels have been acclaimed, by Fay Weldon, and others ^[3] for the wit, narrative mastery and acute social observation with which they tackle modern themes.

Her latest novel, Wild Weekend a comedy that transposes the eighteenth-century play She Stoops To Conquer to a Suffolk village in heyday of New Labour, was published by Time Warner Books in 2004. In the same year, Pan published her latest non-fiction book, Deep France an account of her year in a small village in the Bearn in South West France. Celia developed a growing interesting in how writers learn to write while doing the rounds of promotion tours and literary festivals. Audience questions led to a series of lectures which were the foundation for Bestseller:Secrets of Successful Writing commissioned by Victoria Barnsleyat the newly launched publisher Fourth Estate.

Celia has judged several national literary awards, including the Betty Trask Award, the Macmillan Silver Pen Award and the Authors Club First Novel prize. She served on the committee of management of The Society of Authors from 1995 to 1998. She has taught at the Arvon Foundation and Ty Newydd centre, founded W4W, a writers’ workshop in West London, and until 2003was co-founder and co-director of the National Academy of Writing, which is linked to the University of Central England. In 2005 she joined the staff of Brunel University, West London, becoming Director of the Creative Writing Programme in 2006 and Reader in Creative Writing in 2007.^[4]

Biography

Celia was born in the north London suburb of Wembley Park and decided to become a novelist around the age of nine, inspired by the headmaster of the local school. She won a place at St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, West London, an academic public school with a literary and political tradition; alumnae include the writers Monica Dickens, Selina Hastings, Flora Fraser; Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman; the actors Emily Mortimer, Jennifer Saunders, Joely Richardson and Rachel Weisz; and the politicians Harriet Harman and Shirley Williams. Her father, a dentist, opposed her literary ambitions and refused to allow her to go to university, although she spent a year as a foreign student in France, at the Universitaire de Grenoble, studying French language and literature. Between 1988 and 2003 she was a trustee of Gingerbread, the charity for lone parents. Celia has one daughter and lives in Oxfordshire.

Publications

Fiction:

• Wild Weekend, Time Warner Books, 2004
• Mister Fabulous And Friends, Time Warner Books, 2003
• Heartswap Little,Brown 2000, Time Warner Books 2001
• Sunset Little Brown 1999, Warner Books 2000.
• Getting Home Little Brown & Warner Books
• Harvest Viking 1995, Penguin 1996, Warner Books 1996
• White Ice Viking 1993, Penguin 1994,
• The Prince Chatto & Windus 1990, Penguin, 1991.
• Pearls Chatto & Windus 1987, Penguin 1986, Warner Books 1997

Non Fiction:

• Deep France Pan Macmillan, 2004.
• Bestseller Fourth Estate, 1996
• Glitter: The Truth About Fame Chatto & Windus, 1985

Translations, International Publication & Film Rights Publication rights to Celia's books have been sold in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Israel, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, the United States and Zimbabwe. UK editions are sold in Australia, Canada, Eire, New Zealand and South Africa. Her book Mr Fabulous & Friends was optioned by Friday Night Films 2004. Heartswap was optioned by Nicole Kidman via Cruise-Wagner Paramount, 2000. Harvest was optioned by Ian McShane for McShane Productions, 1996 and Pearls was optioned by TF1/Flach Film, France, in 1987.

Academic New Writing international peer-reviewed journal of Creative Writing, Special Edition, Routledge, 2010 Celia co-edited, with Professor Graeme Harper and Dr Andrew Green, a special edition of New Writing, a leading international peer-reviewed journal for Creative Writing, dedicated to staff and students of the Brunel Creative Writing Programme. Her own papers included in the edition: Creative Writing:the FAQ and Babelfish Babylon.

Journalism - selected articles include:

• Fancy food is enough to turn your stomach The Times, December 23, 2009
• The Times Christmas Books: Travel The Times, November 28, 2009
• Bombay Sapphires: The Immortals by Amit Chaudhuri The Times, Saturday March 14, 2009
• The Last Supper:A Summer in Italy by Rachel Cusk The Times, January 30, 2009
• In Search of a Feeling For Snow:The Times Christmas Books 2008: Travel The Times, November 28, 2008
• Horticultural Who's Who:Abderrazak Benchaabane BBC Gardens Illustrated July 2008
• It's not hard to say goodbye (to the hardback book) The Times, November 21, 2007
• A Faraway Look in their Eyes (travel writing) The Times, December 6, 2007

Reading:

• Rhett Butler's People by Donald McCaig The Times, November 2, 2007
• Farewell to Harry (and the bean-counters) The Times, July 21, 2007
• Get your kicks on Route 312 The Times, June 30, 2007
• It is a truth universally....oh give it a rest, will you (Austen adaptations) The Times, March 12, 2007
• Roll up, roll up and watch the Mona Lisa weep The Times, February 19, 2007
• Taking On Goliath:L'Oreal Took My Home by Monica Waitzfelder The New Statesman, February 19, 2007
• Required Reading:Shadow of the Silk Road Colin Thubron The Times, September 9, 2006
• The Lion, the Witch and the Inklings The Times, November 22, 2005
• I’m a Different Person Now:Serious Head Injury (interview), The Times, July 9, 2005.
• Far Far Better Things The Times, July 2, 2005
• So Your Cat Died (exam marking) The Times, May 9, 2005
• The Discerning Woman Isn't Easy To Please (launch of Easy Living magazine) The Times, T2 cover story, March 2, 2005.
• Brits tame the wild frontiers: one in three wants to emigrate, but the expats will still write home for marmalade The New Statesman June 14, 2004

References

• Who's Who
• Debrett's People of Today