On 1 March it is World Book Day and on the 8 March it is International Women’s Day. With this in mind we have chosen Jeanette Winterson as our inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.
Jeanette 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. This book won the 1985 Whitbread Prize for a First Novel, and was adapted for television by Jeanette in 1990. Some of her other novels have explored gender polarities and sexual identity.
Jeanette is a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award, which focuses on LGBT issues and she won the E. M. Forster Award in 1989. In 2016, she was chosen as one of BBC’s 100 Women.
In 2012, she succeeded Colm Tóibín as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester.
In 2006 Jeanette received and OBE for services to literature.
To find out more about Jeanette and her work please see her website