Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester in 1959. Adopted as a baby, she grew up in Accrington with strict Pentecostal parents who expected her to become a missionary. Her love for another girl brought her into conflict with her family and church. She left home at sixteen and later studied English at Oxford.

Her first novel, “Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit” (1985), drew on that upbringing while transforming it through humour, fantasy and storytelling. It follows a girl called Jeanette as she discovers her desire for women within an evangelical community. The novel won the Whitbread First Novel Award. Winterson also wrote the screenplay for the BBC adaptation, broadcast in 1990.

In “The Passion” (1987), “Sexing the Cherry” (1989) and “Written on the Body” (1992), she continued to experiment with history, narrative and desire. The narrator of “Written on the Body” is never assigned a gender.

Her memoir “Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?” (2011) revisited her childhood and search for belonging. Winterson has also written about art, love and technology. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to literature.