Jeanette Winterson in Conversation with Professor Jane Shaw

Jeanette Winterson in Conversation with Professor Jane Shaw

Part of the Babcock lecture series, in collaboration with the Graduate Liberal Studies Programme at Simon Fraser University.

This year’s Babcock Lecture will be by the multi-award-winning author, Jeanette Winterson. Touching on works including her breakthrough novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (1985), her memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (2011), and her essay collection, Art Objects (1995), Jeanette will discuss the nature and craft of her life-writing with Professor Jane Shaw.

This event will appeal to readers, writers, and scholars interested in life writing, literary experimentation, and the relationship between memoir, fiction, and criticism. No prior specialist knowledge is required.

Speaker Details:

Professor Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester and raised in Lancashire by adoptive parents. Raised in the Elim Pentecostal Church and initially intending to become a Pentecostal Christian missionary, she began evangelising and writing sermons at the age of six. She left home at sixteen and went on to read English at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. Her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published when she was twenty-four. It won the 1985 Whitbread Award for a First Novel, and Winterson’s 1990 screen adaptation won the BAFTA Award for Best Drama. She won the 1987 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for The Passion. Her subsequent novels explore the boundaries of physicality and imagination, gender polarities, and sexual identities, and have received numerous literary awards; Frankissstein: A Love Story was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019. Her stage adaptation of The PowerBook opened at the Royal National Theatre, London, in 2002. Winterson writes widely for major publications, has featured on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, and holds both an OBE and a CBE. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester.

Professor Jane Shaw is Professor of the History of Religion at the University of Oxford. She has previously served as Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and as Dean for Religious Life and Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. Her books include Miracles in Enlightenment England (2006) and Octavia, Daughter of God, (2012), and she most recently co-authored Gen Z, Explained: The Art of Living in a Digital Age (2021). Her current project, Seeking Infinity: Mystics in the Modern World, is under contract with Penguin Allen Lane.

Further Details and Contacts:

This online event is free and open to all.

Registration is required. Registration will close at 14:30 on 24 January 2025; registrants will receive the joining link shortly after.

The lecture will be recorded and made available on the OCLW website soon after. Registration is not required to access the recording.

Queries regarding this event should be addressed to OCLW Events Manager, Dr Eleri Anona Watson.