Salley Vickers

Salley Vickers
Born 1948
Liverpool
Occupation Writer
Nationality English
Education St Paul's Girls' School
Alma mater Newnham College, Cambridge
Genre fiction
Website
www.salleyvickers.com

Salley Vickers (born 1948 in Liverpool) is an English novelist whose works include the word-of-mouth bestseller Miss Garnet's Angel, Mr. Golightly's Holiday, The Other Side of You and Where Three Roads Meet, a retelling of the Oedipus myth to Sigmund Freud in the last months of his life. She also writes poetry.

Family, early life and education

Her mother, Freddie, was a social worker and her father, J.O.N. Vickers, a trades union leader, were both members of the British communist party until 1956 and then very committed socialists.[1] Her father was a committed supporter of Irish republicanism and her first name, 'Salley', is spelled with an 'e' because it is the Irish for 'willow' (from the Latin: salix, salicis) as in the W B Yeats poem, "Down by the salley gardens" a favourite of her parents.

She was brought up in Stoke-on-Trent and London,. She won a state scholarship to St Paul's Girls' School which caused her father some ideological consternation but her mother was supportive. Whilst at St Paul's however, her father encouraged her to work to ensure that she experienced working life and society very different from that of her more affluent school peers.[2]

Salley went on to read English Literature at Newnham College, Cambridge.[3]

Teaching

Following university she taught children with special needs. She also taught English literature at Stanford, Oxford and the Open University specialising in Shakespeare, the 19th-century novel and 20th-century poetry.[4] She was also a WEA and further education tutor for adult education classes. During 201213 she was a Royal Literary Fund fellow of her alma-mater, Newnham College, Cambridge.[5]

Psychoanalysis

After her initial teaching career, she retrained as an Jungian analytical psychotherapist, subsequently working in the NHS. She specialised in helping people who were creatively blocked.[6] She gave up her psychoanalytic work in 2002, although she still lectures on the connections between literature and psychology.

Writing

In 2000 her first novel, Miss Garnet's Angel was published and she became a full-time writer, since publishing several novels and other works as well as contributing to various newspaper and magazines.

In 2002, she was a judge for the Booker Prize for Fiction.[3]

Personal life

She has two sons from her first marriage. In 2002, her second marriage, to the Irish writer and broadcaster Frank Delaney, was dissolved. She lives in Notting Hill.[4]

Novels

References

  1. Morris, Linda (24 November 2012). "The Interview: Salley Vickers". Sydney Morning Herald.
  2. Vickers, Salley (3 November 2012). "Five-minute Memoir: Salley Vickers on first-job hell". The Independent.
  3. 3.0 3.1 "Salley Vickers". Booker Prize Foundation. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  4. 4.0 4.1 O'Kelly, Lisa (5 July 2009). "From couch to ballroom". The Observer.
  5. "Salley Vickers - Fellow at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, 2012/13". Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  6. Wroe, Nicholas (28 April 2001). "A story lost and found in Venice". The Guardian.
  7. "Miss Garnet's Angel - Salley Vickers". www.dooyoo.co.uk. Retrieved 25 November 2010.
  8. "Instances of the Number 3: A Novel by Salley Vickers". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 25 November 2010.
  9. Martinovich, Steven (26 January 2004). "Mr. Golightly's Holiday By Sally Vickers". Enter Stage Right. Retrieved 25 November 2010.
  10. Seymenliyska, Elena (22 April 2006). "The Other Side of You by Salley Vickers,". Guardian. Retrieved 25 November 2010.
  11. Holtsberry, Kevin (15 January 2009). "Where Three Roads Meet by Sally Vickers". collectedmiscellany.com. Retrieved 25 November 2010.
  12. Thompson, Heather (2 August 2009). "Dancing Backwards by Salley Vickers: review". London: Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 25 November 2010.
  13. Arditti, Michael (19 November 2010). "Aphrodite's Hat by Salley Vickers: review". London: Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 25 November 2010.

External links