Who is jeanette winterson girlfriend

I love that things can be more fluid and the wrapper is less important. Why did you decide to make Ry, the modern incarnation of Mary Shelley, a trans guy? We need some trans people in fiction and we need positive models, just as we did when I was writing Oranges. I did it 35 years ago.

I want to do it again now. I wanted it to be positive, but also thoughtful. You have to have the complexity. If you had the opportunity to upload your consciousness, would you do it? Because I think it would be fascinating and terrifying. You would have the vampire experience, which we know is very lonely, and you would suffer. To me, the marker of a powerful mind is a mind that can manage contradictions.

Yes, I would now. I think I could stand up and speak and I think I should. She has been teaching creative writing at Manchester University since And I thought that was a real possibility.

She still has the raggedy Georgian apartment above the organic grocers she owns in Spitalfields, but now spends most of her time in a cottage in the countryside, with her two cats and a labrador for company, writing in a wooden studio in the garden, backing on to the woods. And she has no intention of stopping.

I want to die working. They scar over, but they are always the place where you can be hurt. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop. Phone orders min. Lisa Allardice. Even her dark red hair stands on end. Her walk is on the cusp of a sprint. Here is a woman who runs regularly and does weights, too.

It shows. There is strength and speed to her, but it's her broad smile that you notice first. Someone is on the phone from Paris. Awards are nothing new for Winterson. Ever since her first novel, Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, won her the prestigious Whitbread award at the age of 25, she has been collecting prizes for her books. Minutes later, Jeanette returns with an even broader smile. So charismatic was she that I left the theatre certain that if she set up a religion, I would happily join.

And I could fully understand how a heterosexual woman, like her late lover, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh, could fall in love with her.

Jeanette tells me that being with married women is not a good idea, as it causes hurt to others and herself. Since the age of 40, she gave up married women — she is now 52 — and has been all the better for it. Finally she is in a great relationship with Susie Orbach, the writer and psychotherapist. The sixtysomething writer and author of Fat is a Feminist Issue was married and has two grown-up children. She was just getting over her divorce when they met. Jeanette was supposed to interview her, but it fell through.

Then Susie invited her to lunch. Both wondered if there was something more between them. And they did. They have been together for three years. Jeanette doesn't believe that being lesbian is in the genes. For her, it was an emotional choice. She has been with men too — seven, she tells me, but she decided that she wasn't going to be able to be the female to the male ego.

I'm too driven. I want somebody to look after me and. I'm going to put my writing first. Women are more supportive to one another in a relationship. Is violence in fact a response to provocation? A large body of thought, much of it feminist, would say not. Rage has glamour. Rage is hatred with a press agent. Lament for past mistakes keeps modulating into self-praise. This is one of the standard rhetorical techniques in autobiographical writing, but it has to carry the reader along.

I never wanted the pale version. Love is full strength. I never wanted the diluted version. What had begun with great hope had become slow torture. I do not blame her for anything. Much about us together was marvellous. But as I was to discover, I have big problems around home, making homes, making homes with someone.

Deborah loves being away from home and thrives on it. She is a cuckoo. It can hardly be used neutrally, not by an ambitious writer, not by a writer of any description. What is it doing here? It emits a low hum of disavowed feeling. Susie Orbach, who seems strong and somewhat sincere, was able to help Winterson deal with the emotions and the maddening bureaucracy involved in contacting her birth mother.

She may also have influenced a few passages which speak up for the merits of the emotional middle ground over the extremes. What is unusual is her equation of any uncertainty or hesitation with blasphemy against love itself — the evangelical strain. But I hate feeling more than one thing at once. This seems quite a lot of simultaneous feeling to contain, if you hate having more than one emotion at a time.

Mostly we do our best to stifle life — to be tame or to be wanton. To be tranquillised or raging. Extremes have the same effect; they insulate us from the intensity of life. None of that is my experience. All I can say is that I am pleased — that is the right word — that my mother is safe. The men I knew were kind to me, and I found I could rely on them.

But my change of heart was more than specific; it was a larger compassion for all the suffering and inadequacies of human beings, male or female. This is hardly the voice of born-again moderation. Martyrs at the stake have spoken with more diffidence. Read More. For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions. Newsletter Preferences. This site requires the use of Javascript to provide the best possible experience.

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