Jeanette Winterson

Early life and education

Winterson was born in Manchester and adopted by Constance and John William Winterson on 21 January 1960. She grew up in Accrington, Lancashire, and was raised in the Elim Pentecostal Church. She was raised to become a Pentecostal Christian missionary, and she began evangelising and writing sermons at the age of six.

By the age of 16, Winterson had come out as a lesbian and left home. Soon after, she attended Accrington and Rossendale College. From 1978 to 1981, she supported herself doing odd jobs while reading English at St. Catherine's College, Oxford.

Career

After she moved to London, she took assorted theatre work, including at the Roundhouse, a feminist imprint newly founded in 1983 by Philippa Brewster, and in 1985 Brewster published Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which won the Whitbread Prize for a First Novel. Winterson adapted it for television in 1990. Her novel The Passion was 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 an occasional flat and a ground-floor shop, Verde's, to sell organic food. In January 2017, she discussed closing the shop when a spike in rateable value, and so business rates, threatened to make the business untenable.

In 2009, Winterson donated the short story "Dog Days" to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project, covering four collections of UK stories by 38 authors. Her story appeared in the Fire collection. She also supported the relaunch of the Bush Theatre in London's Shepherd's Bush. She wrote and performed work for the Sixty Six Books 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.

Winterson's 2012 novella The Daylight Gate, based on the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials, appeared on their 400th anniversary. Its main character, Alice Nutter, is based on the real-life woman of the same name. ''The Guardian'''s Sarah Hall describes the work: "the narrative voice is irrefutable; this is old-fashioned storytelling, with a sermonic tone that commands and terrifies. It's also like courtroom reportage, sworn witness testimony. The sentences are short, truthful – and dreadful.... Absolutism is Winterson's forte, and it's the perfect mode to verify supernatural events when they occur. You're not asked to believe in magic. Magic exists. A severed head talks. A man is transmogrified into a hare. The story is stretched as tight as a rack, so the reader's disbelief is ruptured rather than suspended. And if doubt remains, the text's sensuality persuades."

In 2012, Winterson succeeded Colm Tóibín as Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester.

Her 2019 novel, Frankissstein: A Love Story, was longlisted for the Booker Prize.

In October 2023, Jonathan Cape published Night Side of the River. Suzi Feay, writing for Literary Review, said: "In these enjoyable tales Winterson has ably served the genre, while also sketching some unsettling future directions the ghost story might take".

Winterson appeared in the December 2025 docudrama Titanic Sinks Tonight, aired by BBC Two.

Awards and recognition

• 1985: Whitbread Prize for a First Novel for Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
• 1987: John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for The Passion
• 1989: E. M. Forster Award for Sexing the Cherry
• 1992: BAFTA Award for Best Drama for Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit TV serial
• 1994: Winner, Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, for Written on the Body
• 2006: Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2006 New Year Honours, for services to literature
• 2013: Winner, Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir or Biography, for Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
• 2014: St. Louis Literary Award
• 2016: Chosen as one of BBC's 100 Women.
• 2016: Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 2018: She presented the 42nd Richard Dimbleby Lecture in celebration of 100 years of women's suffrage in the UK
• 2018: Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours, for services to literature
• 2019: Longlisted for the Booker Prize for Frankissstein: A Love Story

Personal life

Winterson came out as a lesbian at the age of 16. Her 1987 novel The Passion was inspired by her relationship with Pat Kavanagh, her literary agent. From 1990 to 2002, Winterson had a relationship with BBC radio broadcaster and academic Peggy Reynolds. After that ended, Winterson became involved with theatre director Deborah Warner. In 2015, she married psychotherapist Susie Orbach, author of Fat is a Feminist Issue. The couple separated in 2019.

Bibliography

• Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985)
• Boating for Beginners (1985)
• Fit for the Future: The Guide for Women Who Want to Live Well (1986)
• The Passion (1987)
• Sexing the Cherry (1989)
• Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit: the script (1990)
• Written on the Body (1992)
• Art & Lies: A Piece for Three Voices and a Bawd (1994)
• Great Moments in Aviation: the script (1995)
• Art Objects: Essays in Ecstasy and Effrontery (1995) - essays
• Gut Symmetries (1997)
• The World and Other Places (1998) - short stories
• The Dreaming House (1998)
• The Powerbook (2000)
• The King of Capri (2003) - children's literature
• Lighthousekeeping (2004)
• Weight (2005)
• Tanglewreck (2006) - children's literature
• The Stone Gods (2007)
• The Battle of the Sun (2009)
• • Ingenious* (2009)
• The Lion, The Unicorn and Me: The Donkey's Christmas Story (2009)
• Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (2011) - memoir
• The Daylight Gate (2012)
• The Gap of Time (2015)
• Christmas Days: 12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days (2016)
• *Eight Ghosts: The English Heritage Book of New Ghost Stories * (2017)
• Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere (2018)
• Frankissstein: A Love Story (2019)
• 12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next (2021)
• Night Side of the River: Ghost Stories (2023)

References

References

1. (4 April 2010). "Jeanette Winterson".
2. "Jeanette Winterson".
3. Winterson, Jeanette. (2011). "Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?". [[Jonathan Cape]].
4. Brooks, Libby. (2 September 2000). "Power surge". The Guardian.
5. Eide, Marian. (2001). "Passionate Gods and Desiring Women: Jeanette Winterson, Faith, and Sexuality". International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies.
6. (23 November 2002). "Winterson, Jeanette (b. 1959)".
7. (28 May 2004). "Redemption songs". [[The Guardian]].
8. (28 October 2011). "Page in the Life: Jeanette Winterson". [[The Daily Telegraph.
9. (14 April 2009). "Amazon sorry for book sales error which hit Accrington author". [[Lancashire Telegraph]].
10. (2000). "Biography".
11. Bilger, Audrey. (1997). "Jeanette Winterson, The Art of Fiction No. 150".
12. Kellaway, Kate. (25 June 2006). "If I Was a Dog, I'd Be a Terrier". The Observer.
13. (9 October 2009). "The story of my Spitalfields home". [[The Times]].
14. (12 June 2010). "Once upon a life: Jeanette Winterson". The Guardian.
15. (23 January 2017). "Jeanette Winterson to close London shop due to business rates surge". The Guardian.
16. Chu, Ben. (26 February 2017). "Sorry Jeanette Winterson, but you're wrong about business rates".
17. (31 January 2017). "Jeanette Winterson on the threat of closure to her Spitalfields deli".
18. [http://www.oxfam.org.uk/shop/content/books/books_oxtales.html Ox-Tales] {{webarchive. link. (20 May 2009. Oxfam. Retrieved on 26 August 2011.)
19. [http://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/sixtysix/ The Sixty Six Project] {{webarchive. link. (10 May 2012. Bush Theatre. Retrieved on 26 August 2011.)
20. link. (2 January 2017 "Sixty-Six Books – review" 16 October 2011.)
21. Hall, Sarah. (16 August 2013). "The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson – review". [[The Guardian]].
22. (2012-05-14). "Winterson becomes Manchester Professor". The University of Manchester.
23. (26 August 2019). "How the world finally caught up with Jeanette Winterson".
24. Feay, Suzi. (2024-01-24). "Things That Go Bleep in the Night".
25. (28 December 2025). "Titanic Sinks Tonight review – it’s like you’re reliving that terrifying night". [[The Guardian]].
26. [http://www.harcourtbooks.com/authorinterviews/bookinterview_Winterson.asp "Harcourt Publishers Interview with Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping"] {{webarchive. link. (12 May 2013)
27. "Television in 1991".
28. {{London Gazette. (31 December 2005)
29. [http://lgbtweekly.com/2013/06/04/25th-annual-lambda-literary-award-winners-announced/ "25th annual Lambda Literary Award winners announced"] {{Webarchive. link. (10 June 2013. ''LGBT Weekly'', 4 June 2013.)
30. "Saint Louis University Libraries".
31. (16 September 2014). "A Conversation With Jeanette Winterson".
32. (21 November 2016). "BBC 100 Women 2016: Who is on the list?".
33. "Jeanette Winterson".
34. (6 June 2018). "Don't Protect Me - Respect Me".
35. "The Queen's Birthday Honours List 2018". gov.uk.
36. (24 July 2019). "The Booker prize 2019 longlist's biggest surprise? There aren't many". The Guardian.
37. Gadher, Dipesh. (26 October 2008). "Lesbian novelist Jeanette Winterson planned last visit to dying ex-lover". The Sunday Times.
38. Jaggi, Maya. (29 May 2004). "Saturday Review: Profile: Jeanette Winterson". The Guardian.
39. Jeffries, Stuart. (22 February 2010). "Jeanette Winterson: 'I thought of suicide'". The Guardian.
40. Armitstead, Claire. (July 25, 2021). "Jeanette Winterson: 'The male push is to discard the planet: all the boys are going off into space'".
41. Hickling, Alfred. (25 November 2016). "Christmas Days by Jeanette Winterson review – cruelty, comfort and joy". The Guardian.
42. Thomas-Corr, Johanna. (20 May 2019). "Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson review – an inventive reanimation".
43. "12 Bytes review: Jeanette Winterson on AI and making life less binary".
44. Thomas-Corr, Johanna. (18 August 2021). "Jeanette Winterson's vision of the future of AI is messianic – but unconvincing".
45. (25 July 2021). "12 Bytes by Jeanette Winterson review — but was it written by a robot?". [[The Times]].
46. (21 September 2023). "Jeanette Winterson: I didn't believe in ghosts… until I started living with them". The Daily Telegraph.
47. . (5 October 2023). ["Night Side of the River"](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451954/night-side-of-the-river-by-winterson-jeanette/9781787334175).