Jeanette Winterson

Award-winning writer and journalist

Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester and educated at the University of Oxford. Before attending university she worked various jobs, including as a domestic at a lunatic asylum. She wrote her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985) when she was just 23, and published her second book, The Passion, two years later. She has since written a number of other books, for both adults and children; including Weight (2005) and Stone Gods (2007).

Winterson wrote the TV film Great Moments in Aviation for BBC2 in 1994, and adapted her novel The Powerbook (2000) for the Royal National Theatre London in 2002. She has won a number of awards for her writing, including the Whitbread Prize, UK, and the Cannes Film Festival's Prix d'argent. She writes regularly for the Times and the Guardian.