Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester and raised in Lancashire, by adoptive parents. 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. By age 16 Winterson left home. She soon after read for a degree in English at St Catherine’s College, Oxford.

After moving to London, her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published when she was 25 years old. It won the 1985 Whitbread Black for a First Novel, and was adapted for television  by Winterson in 1990, which in turn won the BAFTA Award for Best Drama. She won the 1987 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for The Passion.

Winterson’s subsequent novels explore the boundaries of physicality and the imagination, gender polarities, and sexual identities, and have won several literary awards. Her most recent novel, Frankissstein: A Love Story was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.

Jeanette also writes for many prominent publications including the Guardian, Times, Daily Mail, Observer, New York Times, and Harpers Bazaar, and has featured on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.

Winterson holds an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).

She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. She believes that art is for everyone and it is her mission to prove it.

© Photo credit: Sam Churchill

Awards

• 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, Lesbian Fiction category, Lambda Literary Awards 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, Lesbian Memoir or Biography category, Lambda Literary Awardsm 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

Selected Publications

Novels

• 1985: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
• 1987: The Passion
• 1989: Sexing the Cherry
• 1992: Written on the Body
• 1994: Art and Lies
• 1997: Gut Symmetries
• 2000: The PowerBook
• 2004: Lighthousekeeping
• 2007: The Stone Gods
• 2012: The Daylight Gate
• 2019: Frankissstein

Short Stories

• 1998: The World & Other Places
• 2023: Night Side of the River

Non-fiction

• 1986: Fit for the Future
• 1995: Art Objects
• 2011: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
• 2021: 12 Bytes

Children’s literature

• 2003: The King of Capri
• 2006: Tanglewreck