One of Manchester’s most critically acclaimed writers will be teaching the future writers of tomorrow with her new role at Manchester University.
Author of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson, is the latest addition to the university’s centre for new writing and will hold four public events a year as part of her contract. She is joining other authors Martin Amis and Colm Toibin at the university.
Controversial writer Martin Amis found caused outrage when it was discovered that he was paid £80,000 a year fro just 28 hours contracted teaching. Manchester University have refused to disclose Winterson’s salary.
52 year old Winterson also runs a delicatessen in London and is planning to commute to her new job from her home in Gloucestershire.
Winterson was born in Manchester. When she was a child she was adopted and was raised in Accrington. Even though she left the family home aged just 16, she was able to win a place at Oxford University. She wrote the best-selling book Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit when she was 25.
The book is loosely based on her own life and recounts the story of a young girl’s struggle growing up gay in a mill town in the North West. It was adapted into a hit BBC drama.
She will teach both undergraduate and post-graduate courses and will tutor students on writing techniques.
She said: “The Centre for New Writing at Manchester is a serious and exciting place… where there is a deep interest in what writing can do an at individual level and for the wider culture. I am from Manchester and the north is part of me; how I write as well as who I am. Let’s see what happens next.”
Vice-chancellor of the university, Dame Nancy Rothwell, said: “She is a brilliant novelist, a public intellectual, and a writer who makes the case that the arts matter in contemporary Britain.”