Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson, OBE (born 27 August 1959) is an award-winning English writer, who became famous with her first book, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a semi-autobiographical novel about a sensitive teenage girl rebelling against conventional values. Some of her other novels have explored gender polarities and sexual identity. Winterson is also a broadcaster and a professor of creative writing. She is a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award, which focuses on LGBT issues. 2Early life 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. Intending to become a Pentecostal Christian missionary, she began evangelising and writing sermons at age six. By the age of 16, Winterson came out as a lesbian and left home. She soon after attended Accrington and Rossendale College, and supported herself at a variety of odd jobs while reading English at St Catherine's College, Oxford. 2Career After she moved to London, her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, won the 1985 Whitbread Prize for a First Novel, and was adapted for television by Winterson in 199