Latest news with #JeanetteWinterson
ABC News
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Is AI our modern-day Frankenstein? Jeanette Winterson and Toby Walsh
Everything humans do is a fiction until it is a fact: flying, space travel, communicating instantly across time and place, defying our own mortality. Acclaimed British author Jeanette Winterson argues that 200 years ago, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, was a message in a bottle, a prophesy, of today's AI revolution. The event The Art and Science of AI was recorded at the 2025 Sydney Writers' Festival, in partnership with the University of New South Wales's Centre for Ideas on 21 May 2025. Speakers Jeanette Winterson Author, 12 Bytes: How artificial intelligence will change the way we live and love, Oranges are not the only fruit, and many more Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester Toby Walsh (host) Author, The Shortest History of AI: Six ideas to understand artificial intelligence today and more Chief Scientist of AI, University of New South Wales Fellow, Australian Academy of Science
The Guardian
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on coming-out tales: from A Boy's Own Story to What It Feels Like for a Girl
'What if I could write about my life exactly as it was?' the teenage narrator of Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story wonders. 'What if I could show it in all its density and tedium and its concealed passion, never divined or expressed?' Published in 1982, A Boy's Own Story was hailed as one of the first coming-out novels, and its author, who died aged 85 last week, as a great pioneer of gay fiction. This auto-fiction relates White's privileged adolescence in 1950s Chicago, his struggles with his sexuality and search for a psychoanalytical 'cure'. In its extraordinary candour about sex – a hallmark of White's prodigious career – the novel remains startling today. It arrived at a pivotal moment in gay history: after the hope of the Stonewall uprising and just before the devastation of Aids, both of which White documented in what became an autobiographical trilogy with The Beautiful Room is Empty (1988) and The Farewell Symphony (1998). Lancashire in the 1970s might seem a world away from the American midwest two decades earlier, but Jeanette Winterson's account of her miserable childhood in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit was similarly groundbreaking when it was first published in 1985. Forty years later, plans are under way for an RSC musical version next year. 'Why be happy when you could be normal?' her adoptive mother, Mrs Winterson, an evangelical Pentecostal Christian, demands, when she catches the teenage Jeanette in bed with another girl. It doesn't get much more mainstream than a musical. But, as Winterson told the audience at the Hay literary festival last weekend, the BBC's Bafta-winning 1990 adaptation was a 'very brave' move after Section 28. 'It really shook up TV at that moment,' she said. Now another BBC adaptation is shaking up TV. What It Feels Like for a Girl (the title is a 2000 Madonna song), based on Paris Lees' 2021 memoir, powerfully shows what it meant to be a transgender teenager in the Midlands in the noughties. This personal story has once again landed at a time of intense public reckoning over LGBTQ+ rights. What It Feels Like for a Girl might be recent history, but, with ominous nods to a nascent internet, it is still a period piece. It is pre-social media and what Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Anxious Generation, has called 'the great rewiring of childhood'. Where once young people read to discover they were not alone, now they scroll. Each of these coming-out stories is rooted in a specific time and place. They are about class as well as sex, the salvation of books and music as well as romance. They are about loneliness, desire and a longing for escape – being a teenager, in short. Despite heartbreaking scenes of abuse and pain, they are also bursting with excitement. One of the conditions of youth is that one's 'own story' feels like the only story. This is why the coming-of-age narrative endures. In our digital age of toxic masculinity and intolerance, these memoirs call for truthfulness and compassion. They are reminders of the fragility of progress. 'If gays have gone from invisibility to ubiquity and from self-hatred to self-acceptance,' White wrote in his last book, The Loves of My Life, published in January, 'we should recognize we're still being pushed off cliffs in Yemen – and from the top fronds of Florida palms, for all I know.'
ABC News
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Lucy Dacus answers your questions about life, love and the papal conclave
You might know Lucy Dacus as one-third of Boygenius (alongside Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers) or the writer of one of the most devastating songs of 2018 (it's 'Night Shift', obviously). She's also a well-established artist in her own right, and dropped her fourth album in March. To celebrate the release of Forever Is A Feeling and for a cheeky catch up, Lucy joined Abby and Tyrone on Drive and answered some of your burning questions. Who was your niche childhood celebrity crush? - Annabelle I've said this before – it's the poet dog from the Goofy Movie , but I feel like I should pick somebody else. I said this recently but all the Bond girls. I would watch all the James Bond movies and, um, that was important. I kinda had a crush on the goth chick from Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants . She was just so blasé. The way that kids pick their Disney princess, I feel like I had a friend group and we would pick who we were in that book or movie and I was definitely her. What books or films inspired this album? - Ruby There's a book called Written On The Body by Jeanette Winterson. It's narrated by someone whose gender is never disclosed, and they have this passionate, obsession type love for this person. And the way that they write about how they think about the person and what it's like to be in the same room as them and to slip into love with them is... just electric. So I get some inspiration from that. Garth Greenwell is a great writer, he actually wrote my bio for this [album]. He has a book called Cleanness and a book called What Belongs To You that are very sexy and kind of visceral and still really deep and emotional. Just about at what point do we reach into each others' hearts – if you're already physically engaged, at what do you become emotionally engaged? What would your advice be for someone going through a lesbian break-up? - Z I don't know if there's any blanket advice, every situation is so different. Because, I don't know, I could be like 'well, you're better off', or it could be like 'you know, things change'. Here's maybe the piece of advice I give, and this is not just lesbian, this is just for people in general: Ideally relationships are places where we can meet each other where we're at and show each other more of ourselves. And at a certain point, maybe you outpace each other and you have to diverge. Ideally it can be done painlessly, but almost never is that the case. So if you're feeling pain, you don't have to shy away from it. That's just a part of life. I want to write music but it always feels like I'm performing or trying to put on someone I'm not. How do I be more authentic? - Amy Well, the good thing is anything you make is authentic to you, whether it's a performance or not. No one is actually faking it. Some people have an identity they assume. Some people really write from the heart. Some people you feel as disingenuous, other people you feel really genuine, whether or not it's a fictional character that they're within. There's really no wrong entry point. So if you have an easier time writing from another perspective... secretly, you're still just in it. I don't think you actually have to try that hard and I don't know if you're really off-base. I haven't heard your music, but that's what I would say. Can you tour in like a year so I can get my finances together? - Adele I literally wish I could speak to that. I'm very eager to get over there – and my whole band and crew – we have a real soft spot and excitement at the idea of going to Australia. So know that my heart's in the right place. Do you think you would have won if you were competing in the recent papal conclave? - @gorgeousfart I'm not Catholic! Well, but I guess they're getting anybody in there now, it sounds like. So maybe I would have had more of a chance.
Sydney Morning Herald
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Forty years on, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit still tells a radical truth
When Jeanette Winterson was 23, she had an interview at the new feminist publisher, Pandora Press, hoping to be their publicist. She didn't get the job. But the way she talked about her extremely strange childhood impressed the publisher, Philippa Brewster, who told Winterson, 'If you can write it the way you tell it, I'll buy it.' Winterson had always written: sermons, stories to herself to try to make sense of the world. She hadn't tried to write a novel. 'I thought, I'll sit down and see what happens,' she says. 'I had no idea about gender, sexism, all of that.' But although she came from a family where non-religious books were banned, her mother had read to her daily from the King James Bible, which gave her a love of language, story and structure. What emerged was the fictionalised story of growing up in working-class Accrington, Lancashire, as the adopted child of an eccentric and fiercely Pentecostal evangelist mother. 'I thought I could write my way out,' she says. 'Language is something I can trust, so I can see the inside of my head. You need to be able to write yourself as a fiction, to understand you're a story in progress. I didn't need to be trapped in a narrative that belonged to somebody else.' The story was funny, awfully bizarre and bizarrely awful – what other child would have her deafness ignored because it was thought she was in a state of rapture? – but to the child Jeanette, it was just life, getting on with things while waiting for Jesus to come and roll up heaven like a scroll. Until at 16 she fell in love with a girl, and everything came apart. When you're a young person and you don't have anything, you believe it can only get better. After a few months of writing, she cycled back to Pandora with the only copy of her manuscript in her saddlebag (she couldn't afford to photocopy it). This time Pandora's other boss, Australian feminist Dale Spender, was in the office with Brewster. 'Dale snatched the manuscript and read the beginning. Like most people, I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle. She turned to Philippa and said, 'This is good.' I thought, Oh, there's a way in for me.' That manuscript became the hugely successful novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, published in 1985. The current publishers, Vintage Classics, are sending their star author around the world to celebrate the book's 40th anniversary. I read it in one breathless swoop, and like many fans, I can't believe it's been 40 years since. Nor can Winterson. She is talking to me from her home in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire. Behind her are windows with a view of the woods and the sun is casting a halo over her curly head. An eager and fervent speaker, she still has her Northern accent. 'I was brought up in a gospel tent, I'm never nervous public speaking,' she says. 'They book me in for a lot of big events. The more people the better. I'm trying to present to people what I believe, that's part of my job.' She's keen to find the positives in even the worst things that have happened to her, and she's hopeful for the future where other writers are gloomy, particularly over her pet subject, the challenges we face with AI. In the early days, Oranges was sometimes slotted into the cookery bookshelves with the marmalade recipes. Later, it made its way onto the LGBTQ shelves. Now it's in with the literary classics and has found new generations of readers around the world. Winterson has since written 10 novels, as well as children's books, nonfiction and screenplays, including one for the prizewinning BBC TV adaptation of Oranges. She has won many awards, including a CBE and an OBE for services to literature, and her work is published in 28 countries. Young people respond to Orange' s queer coming of age story in China and Hungary. 'It's a classic, I'm not the kind of person they would want to ban. At this point in my life I have some useful status, I can get to places other people can't. I'm hoping because it's so well known and well-loved, it will be a kind of raft you can cling onto.' There wasn't much for young Jeanette to cling to when she fell in love. Mrs Winterson and her fellow church members held an exorcism, chanting continuous prayers, speaking in tongues and laying their hands on Jeanette. It had a hypnotic effect, she says. 'They do believe people are inhabited by devils and they can be expelled. But obviously to a young girl it was frightening.' Inevitably, teenage Jeanette had to leave home. She moved around for a couple of years, studying and working, living in a tent and sleeping on other people's floors. 'I thought, I can't pretend to be the person they want me to be. By then, things had broken down and were so full of distress and sadness that to stay would have been far worse.' One of her best times was living in a Mini, with its boot full of her favourite books. 'It wasn't as dramatic as it would be now. I felt free, I wasn't afraid. When you're a young person and you don't have anything, you believe it can only get better.' She eventually made her way to Oxford University to study English literature. 'It was wonderful, I was free to study. It was also a huge cultural shock because people like me were not there in any numbers. I didn't fit. But it changed my life completely; I was able to move into a different world.' Loading Winterson returned to her early years in 2012, this time in a memoir with the title from one of her mother's inspired sayings, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? She had come through a painful period after an attempted suicide and felt she needed to go back. With more distance between her and her childhood, she felt free to mention darker things. 'There's a lot more pain and hurt in that book. I could go back to some of the material and not have to disguise it.' One of Mrs Winterson's sayings was 'The devil had led me to the wrong crib'. Still, Winterson can see the bright side: 'It's absolutely appalling, but full of metaphor and colour. Suddenly we're not in a crummy two-up and two-down. We're in a fairy tale, an opera, a grand landscape where the devil will bother to come and deceive Mrs Winterson.' In the memoir, she details her quest to find her birth mother. She succeeded, but it turned out to be a mixed blessing. 'I was glad I found her. I wanted other adopted people to understand if they take that route, they shouldn't imagine there is going to be a pink focus, happy Hollywood ending. We're all going to do our best, but it's fine for it to go wrong.' Loading Winterson did have a reunion with her adoptive father before he died. 'I was angry with him for a long time for not standing up for me, and for beating me. I was glad I could meet him on his own terms, there was no point in going in for explanation. Dad was like a very little boy. I thought he was never really allowed to grow up.' Mrs Winterson died when her daughter was 30, so there was never time for a reunion. In any case, she thinks it would have been impossible. 'She was an absolutist. For her to recognise what happened to me would have reversed everything she believed. She was a deeply unhappy woman, and unhappiness closes you down.' When Winterson wrote Oranges, 'in my innocence I didn't realise that women were only ever supposed to write about their own experience in a small way. But I don't care. If people are still reading it, if it can still be in print 40 years later, all over the world, I have got something right.'
The Age
12-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Forty years on, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit still tells a radical truth
When Jeanette Winterson was 23, she had an interview at the new feminist publisher, Pandora Press, hoping to be their publicist. She didn't get the job. But the way she talked about her extremely strange childhood impressed the publisher, Philippa Brewster, who told Winterson, 'If you can write it the way you tell it, I'll buy it.' Winterson had always written: sermons, stories to herself to try to make sense of the world. She hadn't tried to write a novel. 'I thought, I'll sit down and see what happens,' she says. 'I had no idea about gender, sexism, all of that.' But although she came from a family where non-religious books were banned, her mother had read to her daily from the King James Bible, which gave her a love of language, story and structure. What emerged was the fictionalised story of growing up in working-class Accrington, Lancashire, as the adopted child of an eccentric and fiercely Pentecostal evangelist mother. 'I thought I could write my way out,' she says. 'Language is something I can trust, so I can see the inside of my head. You need to be able to write yourself as a fiction, to understand you're a story in progress. I didn't need to be trapped in a narrative that belonged to somebody else.' The story was funny, awfully bizarre and bizarrely awful – what other child would have her deafness ignored because it was thought she was in a state of rapture? – but to the child Jeanette, it was just life, getting on with things while waiting for Jesus to come and roll up heaven like a scroll. Until at 16 she fell in love with a girl, and everything came apart. When you're a young person and you don't have anything, you believe it can only get better. After a few months of writing, she cycled back to Pandora with the only copy of her manuscript in her saddlebag (she couldn't afford to photocopy it). This time Pandora's other boss, Australian feminist Dale Spender, was in the office with Brewster. 'Dale snatched the manuscript and read the beginning. Like most people, I lived for a long time with my mother and father. My father liked to watch the wrestling, my mother liked to wrestle. She turned to Philippa and said, 'This is good.' I thought, Oh, there's a way in for me.' That manuscript became the hugely successful novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, published in 1985. The current publishers, Vintage Classics, are sending their star author around the world to celebrate the book's 40th anniversary. I read it in one breathless swoop, and like many fans, I can't believe it's been 40 years since. Nor can Winterson. She is talking to me from her home in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire. Behind her are windows with a view of the woods and the sun is casting a halo over her curly head. An eager and fervent speaker, she still has her Northern accent. 'I was brought up in a gospel tent, I'm never nervous public speaking,' she says. 'They book me in for a lot of big events. The more people the better. I'm trying to present to people what I believe, that's part of my job.' She's keen to find the positives in even the worst things that have happened to her, and she's hopeful for the future where other writers are gloomy, particularly over her pet subject, the challenges we face with AI. In the early days, Oranges was sometimes slotted into the cookery bookshelves with the marmalade recipes. Later, it made its way onto the LGBTQ shelves. Now it's in with the literary classics and has found new generations of readers around the world. Winterson has since written 10 novels, as well as children's books, nonfiction and screenplays, including one for the prizewinning BBC TV adaptation of Oranges. She has won many awards, including a CBE and an OBE for services to literature, and her work is published in 28 countries. Young people respond to Orange' s queer coming of age story in China and Hungary. 'It's a classic, I'm not the kind of person they would want to ban. At this point in my life I have some useful status, I can get to places other people can't. I'm hoping because it's so well known and well-loved, it will be a kind of raft you can cling onto.' There wasn't much for young Jeanette to cling to when she fell in love. Mrs Winterson and her fellow church members held an exorcism, chanting continuous prayers, speaking in tongues and laying their hands on Jeanette. It had a hypnotic effect, she says. 'They do believe people are inhabited by devils and they can be expelled. But obviously to a young girl it was frightening.' Inevitably, teenage Jeanette had to leave home. She moved around for a couple of years, studying and working, living in a tent and sleeping on other people's floors. 'I thought, I can't pretend to be the person they want me to be. By then, things had broken down and were so full of distress and sadness that to stay would have been far worse.' One of her best times was living in a Mini, with its boot full of her favourite books. 'It wasn't as dramatic as it would be now. I felt free, I wasn't afraid. When you're a young person and you don't have anything, you believe it can only get better.' She eventually made her way to Oxford University to study English literature. 'It was wonderful, I was free to study. It was also a huge cultural shock because people like me were not there in any numbers. I didn't fit. But it changed my life completely; I was able to move into a different world.' Loading Winterson returned to her early years in 2012, this time in a memoir with the title from one of her mother's inspired sayings, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? She had come through a painful period after an attempted suicide and felt she needed to go back. With more distance between her and her childhood, she felt free to mention darker things. 'There's a lot more pain and hurt in that book. I could go back to some of the material and not have to disguise it.' One of Mrs Winterson's sayings was 'The devil had led me to the wrong crib'. Still, Winterson can see the bright side: 'It's absolutely appalling, but full of metaphor and colour. Suddenly we're not in a crummy two-up and two-down. We're in a fairy tale, an opera, a grand landscape where the devil will bother to come and deceive Mrs Winterson.' In the memoir, she details her quest to find her birth mother. She succeeded, but it turned out to be a mixed blessing. 'I was glad I found her. I wanted other adopted people to understand if they take that route, they shouldn't imagine there is going to be a pink focus, happy Hollywood ending. We're all going to do our best, but it's fine for it to go wrong.' Loading Winterson did have a reunion with her adoptive father before he died. 'I was angry with him for a long time for not standing up for me, and for beating me. I was glad I could meet him on his own terms, there was no point in going in for explanation. Dad was like a very little boy. I thought he was never really allowed to grow up.' Mrs Winterson died when her daughter was 30, so there was never time for a reunion. In any case, she thinks it would have been impossible. 'She was an absolutist. For her to recognise what happened to me would have reversed everything she believed. She was a deeply unhappy woman, and unhappiness closes you down.' When Winterson wrote Oranges, 'in my innocence I didn't realise that women were only ever supposed to write about their own experience in a small way. But I don't care. If people are still reading it, if it can still be in print 40 years later, all over the world, I have got something right.'
