I write novels like:
Daughter of Jerusalem (which won the Somerset Maugham Award)
Virgin Territory
Three Times Table
Home Truths
Brittle Joys
and, with Michelene Wandor Arky Types
and short stories in various
collections:
Telling Tales
A Book of Spells
Women Fly When Men Aren't Watching
and, with Zoe Fairbairns, Valerie Miner, Michele Roberts and Michelene Wandor
Tales We Tell our Mothers.
and non-fiction books like:
A Big Enough God.
Vesta Tilley
A Cunning Plot
They're all about the same
things though; about sex and gender and risk and beauty and stories and
language and power and glory
and I worked for Stanley Kubrick on the never-made A.I. project.
ISLAND VOICES - you may
have noticed that the East Midlands is not an island.
Jamaica, Ireland, Iceland, they're islands; but Northamptonshire (where I live),
Rutland,
Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire (excluding the
High Peaks)
are about as much NOT-island as it is possible to be. However I am keeping quiet
about
this because I'm enjoying myself. A LOT. . .especially when we're all reading
together
because it's such an eccentric, eclectic, unexpected, extraordinary mixture
of voices
and styles and accents and cultures and concerns - and the only thing that we
do seem
to have in common is connection with WORDS - with language, with writing, and
with
forcing those icons to behave, to communicate,to express - to seduce.
AT HOME - I'm working on
a collection of short stories about all the middle-aged and
menopausal women who got left out of all the stories - the old ones and the
new ones.
Actually they didn't get left out: Helen of Troy was over 50 when the gods named
her
as the most beautiful woman in the world, but that is the point.
I'm also trying to think about how to write about Silence. . . .
.
. .so I'll shut up now.