Michèle Roberts

Michèle Roberts

Michèle Brigitte Roberts (born 20 May 1949, Bushey, Hertfordshire) is a British writer, novelist and poet. Roberts was the daughter of a French Catholic teacher mother (Monique Caulle) and English Protestant father (Reginald Roberts); she has dual UK-France nationality.

Contents

Early life

She was raised in Edgware, Middlesex and educated at a convent, expecting to become a nun, before reading English at Somerville College, Oxford, where she lost her Catholic faith,[1] and also studied at University College London training to be a librarian. She worked for the British Council in Bangkok, Thailand in this role from 1973 to 1974.

Career

Active in socialist and feminist politics (the Women's Liberation Movement) since the early 1970s, she formed a writers' collective with Sara Maitland, Michelene Wandor and Zoe Fairbairns. At this time she was the Poetry Editor (1975-7) at Spare Rib, the feminist magazine and later at City Limits (1981–83). Her first novel A Piece of the Night was published in 1978 and Daughters of the House (1992) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

She is a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, awarded by the French government, but has turned down an OBE as a consequence of her republican views.[2]

Michèle Roberts is an Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia and was Visiting Professor in Writing at Nottingham Trent University for several years. Paper Houses, a memoir of her life since 1970, was published in 2007.

Publications

Essays

  • Food, Sex & God: on Inspiration and Writing, 1988, Virago

Novels

  • A Piece of the Night, 1978, Women's Press
  • The Visitation, 1978, Women's Press
  • The Wild Girl (Also known as The Secret Gospel of Mary Magdalene), 1984, Methuen
  • The Book of Mrs Noah, 1987, Methuen
  • In the Red Kitchen, 1990, Methuen
  • Psyche and the Hurricane, 1991, Methuen
  • Daughters of the House, 1992, Virago and Morrow (USA)
  • During Mother's Absence, 1992, Virago
  • Flesh & Blood, 1994, Virago
  • Impossible Saints. Hopewell, 1998, Ecco Press
  • Fair Exchange, 1999, Little, Brown
  • The Looking Glass, 2000, Little, Brown
  • The Mistressclass, 2002, Little, Brown
  • Reader, I Married Him, 2006, Little, Brown

Poetry

  • The Mirror of the Mother, 1986, Methuen
  • Psyche and the Hurricane , 1991, Methuen
  • All the Selves I Was, 1995, Virago

Short stories

  • Your Shoes, 1991[3]
  • During Mother's Absence, 1993, Virago
  • Playing Sardines, 2001, Virago
  • Mud: Stories of Sex and Love, 2010, Virago

References

  1. ^ Discussed in Paper Houses.
  2. ^ Roberts' personal biography
  3. ^ BBC English literature

External links


Stub icon This article about a novelist from the United Kingdom is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. This article about a British journalist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.