The Women Writers'' Handbook: 2020

About A.S. ByattEmma WoolfIda VitaleJackie KayMadeleine ThienPhilippa Gregory

A. S. Byatt is renowned internationally for her novels and short stories. Her novels include the Booker Prize-winning Possession The Biographer''s Tale and the quartet The Virgin in the Garden Still Life Babel Tower and A Whistling Woman. Her most recent novel The Children''s Book was published in 2009. Her highly acclaimed collections of short stories include Sugar and Other Stories The Matisse Stories The Djinn in the Nightingale''s Eye Elementals and Little Black Book of Stories. A distinguished critic as well as a writer of fiction A S Byatt was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999. Kit de Waal was born in Birmingham to an Irish mother who was a childminder and foster carer and a Caribbean father. She worked for 15 years in criminal and family law was a magistrate for several years and sits on adoption panels. She used to advise Social Services on the care of foster children and has written training manuals on adoption foster care and judgecraft for members of the judiciary. She was named Future Book Person of the Year in 2020. Her writing has received numerous awards including the Bridport Flash Fiction Prize 2014 and 2015 and the SI Leeds Literary Reader''s Choice Prize 2014 and the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year. My Name Is Leon her first novel was published in 2016 and shortlisted for the Costa Book Award. She has two children and lives in the West Midlands. In 2012 Lim was named the Singapore recipient of the South East Asia Write Award. Her most recent novel The River''s Song was published by Aurora Metro Books (2014) and was named ''Best Books of 2015'' by Kirkus Reviews. Her novel Fistful of Colours (1992) was awarded the Inaugural Singapore Literature Prize. A short story from Lim''s The Lies That Build A Marriage was made into a film. Her work is also featured in Writing The City commissioned by British Council Singapore. She has received a Fulbright grant and is also a Fellow and former International Writer-in-Residence of the International Writers'' Program University of Iowa. She was the Arvon Foundation writer-in-residence at Moniack Mhaor in 2005. She has participated in the Edinburgh Book Festival and the Melbourne Writers'' Festival among many others. Lim has also held writing residencies in the Philippines Myanmar South Korea Australia and the United Kingdom. A historian and writer she has written many novels based on the Tudor period notably The Other Boleyn Girl which was made into a major film and The White Queen which has been dramatised for TV by the BBC. She founded the charity ''Gardens for The Gambia'' which sinks wells to enable market gardening in Gambian schools. She is also a patron of the UK Chagos Support Association which supports the Chagos islanders in their struggle against the British injustice of being displaced from their homes in the 1960s and 70s for the building of an American airbase. After graduating from Newnham College Cambridge Claire Tomalin worked in publishing before becoming literary editor of both the New Statesman magazine and the Sunday Times newspaper. Her first book The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft won the Whitbread First Book Award and she has since written a number of highly acclaimed and bestselling biographies. They include Jane Austen: A Life The Invisible Woman a definitive account of Dickens'' relationship with the actress Ellen Ternan which won three major literary awards and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self was Whitbread Book of the Year in 2002. Her biography Charles Dickens: A Life provides an in-depth biography of the author. She is a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery London and the Wordsworth Trust a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Vice-President of English PEN. She is married to the writer Michael Frayn. Vitale was born in Montevideo Uruguay in 1923. She is a literary critic translator and author of more than a dozen poetry collections including La luz de esta memoria (The Light of this Remembrance) (1949) Palabra dada (Expectant Words) (1953) Cada uno en su noche (Each in His Own Night) (1960) Jardin de silice (Garden of Silica) (1978) Procura de lo imposible (Procurement of the Impossible) (1998) Reduccion del infinito (Reduction of the Infinite) (2002) El Abc de Byobu (Byobu''s ABC) (2005) and most recently Plantas y animales (Plants and Animals) (2003). Vitale is the recipient of international literary prizes such as the Octavio Paz Prize for Poetry and Essay (2009) the Alfonso Reyes International Prize (2015) the Reina Sofia Prize for Ibero-American Poetry (2015) and the Cervantes Prize. Vitale collaborated closely with Latin American literary magazines such as Asir Clinamen Epoca Jaque Maldoror Marcha Uno mas uno and Vuelta. In 1973 she and her husband the poet Enrique Fierro sought exile in Mexico where they lived until 1984. In 1989 they moved to Austin Texas.Vitale now lives in Montevideo Uruguay. Brazilian human rights activist and author Djamila Ribeiro was born in the port city of Santos. She went on to study political philosophy at UNIFESP one of the best universities in Brazil. Djamila is now one of the most popular writers and public figures in the Afro-Brazilian women''s rights movement. Her blog has hundreds of thousands of followers and she regularly makes public appearances to discuss the lives of women in Brazil a country in which people of colour experience exceptional levels of violence and prejudice. Her most recent book is Nos Madelenas: uma palavra pelo feminismo (trans: We Magdalenes: a word for feminism). In 2016 Djamila was appointed sub-secretary of Human Rights for the City of Sao Paulo a position which she continues to hold. Ribeiro was awarded a Master in Political Philosophy from the Federal University of Sao Paulo. She is the author of Lugar de Fala Quem tem medo do Feminismo Negro? and Pequeno Manual Antirracista (still without translation into German). She is the Coordinator of the Plural Feminisms Collection which fosters titles written by black people at an affordable price. A Laureate of the Prince Claus Award 2019 she was named one of the 100 most influential women in the world by the BBC. Sarah Waters was born in Wales. She is the author of six novels Tipping the Velvet Affinity Fingersmith The Night Watch The Little Stranger and The Paying Guests which have been adapted for stage television and feature film in the UK and US. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Women''s Prize for Fiction and she has won the Betty Trask Award the Somerset Maugham Award The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award the South Bank Show Award for Literature and the CWA Historical Dagger. She has been named Author of the Year four times: by the British Book Awards the Booksellers'' Association Waterstones Booksellers Stonewall''s Writer of the Decade in 2015 Diva Magazine Author of the Year Award and The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence in 2017 which is given in recognition of a writer''s entire body of work. Waters was awarded an OBE in 2019 for services to literature in the Queen''s Birthday Honours. She lives in London. Dame Carol Ann Duffy is a British poet and playwright. Duffy first had her poetry published in magazines as a 14-year-old. She went to Liverpool University graduating with a degree in philosophy in 1977. She worked as a poetry critic for The Guardian and as an editor for the poetry magazine Ambit. In 1996 she took a post lecturing in poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University where she later became creative director of the Writing School She was the first woman Poet Laureate of Great Britain serving from 2009-2019. Writer critic journalist former columnist for the Times and Newsweek and TV presenter on Channel 4''s Supersize vs Superskinny. Often heard debating and reviewing on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 5 Live and BBC Radio Ulster. Bestselling books include: An Apple a Day: A Memoir of Love and Recovery from Anorexia The Ministry of Thin: How the Pursuit of Perfection Got Out of Control Letting Go: How To Heal Your Hurt Love Your Body & Transform Your Life Positively Primal: Finding Health & Happiness in a Hectic World The A-Z of Eating Disorders Wellbeing: Body Confidence Health & Happiness Ways of Escape England''s Lane. www.emmawoolf.com Jackie Kay was born to a Scottish mother and Nigerian father in Edinburgh on 9 November 1961 and was adopted as a baby by Helen and John Kay who had already adopted a boy Maxwell. The family lived in Bishopbriggs (Glasgow); John worked full time for the Communist Party of Great Britain and Helen was the Scottish secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Kay has drawn on her unconventional upbringing in her poetry and described it with humour and great affection in her autobiographical account of the search for her birth parents Red Dust Road (2010) which she has called a ''love letter'' to her white adoptive parents. Sanghera was born and brought up in Derby. A survivor of a forced marriage she is the founder of Karma Nirvana an award winning charity that supports both men and women affected by honour-based abuse and forced marriages. Jasvinder''s memoir Shame was described in the House of Lords as a ''political weapon'' and along with Daughters of Shame are Sunday Times Top 10 Bestsellers. In 2018 she was awarded Honorary Doctor of Law by De Montfort University Leicester and Woman of the Year by Leeds City Council and in 2019 she was awarded the Robert Burns Humanitarian of the Year Award and also the Sikh Woman of Substance Award. Jasvinder is recognised as bringing the issue of forced marriage into the public domain and Prime Minister David Cameron stated that her work ''turned my head on the issue of forced marriage''. Laura is the author of Transgender Resistance: Socialism and the Fight for Trans Liberation (Bookmarks) She was a lecturer at Bradford College and a leading member of the lecturers'' unions Natfhe and UCU.