Julie Myerson | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 2 June 1960 Nottingham, England |
| Occupation | Novelist, critic |
| Nationality | British |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
Julie Myerson (born Julie Susan Pike; 2 June 1960) is an English author and critic. As well as fiction and non-fiction books, she formerly wrote a column in The Guardian entitled "Living with Teenagers", based on her family experiences. She appeared regularly as a panellist on the arts programme Newsnight Review .
Myerson studied English at Bristol University and then worked for the National Theatre as a press officer. [1]
She has written a column for The Independent about her domestic trials, including her partner, the screenwriter and director Jonathan Myerson, and their children Jacob (known as Jake), Chloe and Raphael. Since then, she has written a column for the Financial Times about homes and houses. Myerson was a regular reviewer on the UK arts programme, Newsnight Review , on BBC Two. [2]
Myerson's novels are usually dark in mood, tending towards the supernatural.
Her first was Sleepwalking (1994), which was to some degree autobiographical. It deals in part with the suicide of an uncaring and abusive father. (Myerson's own father had committed suicide.) The main character Susan is heavily pregnant and begins an affair. She also feels she is haunted by her father's mother, reliving the neglect that had made him abusive. The book was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. [3]
In The Touch (1996), a group of young people try to help a tramp who preaches fundamentalist Christianity and turns violently against them. [4] In Me and the Fat Man (1999), a waitress takes to earning extra giving oral sex in a park, though not out of necessity. She gets involved with two other men, friends who have an awkward relationship and a secret between them that turns out to be related to her own birth. Laura Blundy (2001) is set in the Victorian period. Julie Myerson tries to bring out the freshness and modernity of the period as it would have appeared at the time. Something Might Happen (2003) is about a murder in a Suffolk seaside town based on Southwold, where Myerson has a second home. [2]
The novel Nonfiction was published in 2022. [5]
Julie Myerson was the anonymous author of "Living with Teenagers", [6] a Guardian column and later book [7] [8] that detailed the lives of a family with three teenage children. The column ended after one of the children was identified and ridiculed at school, although Myerson had denied being the author three times to her own children, only coming clean when it became clear there was no other option. [9] After The Guardian confirmed the authorship, it removed the articles from its website to "protect their privacy". [6]
Myerson was at the centre of a media controversy in March 2009, when details of her book The Lost Child: a True Story emerged; commentators criticised her for what Minette Marrin in The Sunday Times called "betrayal not just of love and intimacy, but also of motherhood itself". [10] Tim Lott called the book a "moral failure", adding: "Julie has betrayed Jake for her own ambition." [11] However, some critics took a diametrically opposing view. The Guardian 's Mark Lawson, a friend of Julie Myerson, called the book noble, saying, its "elegance and thoughtfulness... and its warning of a fate that may overtake many parents – should not be lost in the extra-literary frenzy." [12] The Observer 's Kate Kellaway called the book rash but courageous, as if Myerson had tried to "write honestly about a nightmarish situation and a subject that never seems to get the attention it deserves." [13] The book appeared in the US in August 2009. [14]
Myerson stated in 2009 she might sell the film rights to The Lost Child at some point, "maybe in 20 years." [15]
Southwold is a seaside town and civil parish on the English North Sea coast in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk. It lies at the mouth of the River Blyth within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The town is about 11 miles (18 km) south of Lowestoft, 29 miles (47 km) north-east of Ipswich and 97 miles (156 km) north-east of London, within the parliamentary constituency of Suffolk Coastal. The "All Usual Residents" 2011 Census figure gives a total of 1,098 persons for the town. The 2012 Housing Report by the Southwold and Reydon Society concluded that 49 per cent of the dwellings are used as second homes or let to holiday-makers.
Laura Blundy (2000) is a historical novel by Julie Myerson set in Victorian London. It is the story of a woman whose life takes a turn for the worse.
Julie Burchill is an English writer. Beginning as a staff writer at the New Musical Express at the age of 17, she has since contributed to newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times and The Guardian. Her writing, which was described by The Observer in 2002 as "outrageously outspoken" and "usually offensive," has been the subject of legal action on several occasions. Burchill is also a novelist, and her 2004 novel Sugar Rush was adapted for television.
Jenny Diski FRSL was an English writer. She had a troubled childhood, but was taken in and mentored by the novelist Doris Lessing; she lived in Lessing's house for four years. Diski was educated at University College London, and worked as a teacher during the 1970s and early 1980s.
Minette Caroline Mary Walters DL is an English crime writer.
Sheila Heti is a Canadian writer.
Lucy Kellaway is a British journalist turned teacher. She remains listed as a management columnist at the Financial Times (FT), and became a trainee teacher in a secondary school in 2017.
Zoe Abigail Williams is a Welsh columnist, journalist, and author.
Alice Priscilla Lyle Oswald is a British poet from Reading, Berkshire. Her work won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2017. In September 2017, she was named as BBC Radio 4's second Poet-in-Residence, succeeding Daljit Nagra. On 1 October 2019, she took up the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry.
Lionel Shriver is an American author and journalist who lives in the United Kingdom. Her novel We Need to Talk About Kevin won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2005.
Ariel S. Leve is an American author and award-winning journalist. She was a columnist for The Guardian and subsequently for the Sunday Times Magazine. Her memoir An Abbreviated Life was published by HarperCollins in 2016.
Richard Lloyd Parry is a British foreign correspondent and writer. He is the Asia Editor of The Times of London, based in Tokyo, and is the author of the non-fiction books In the Time of Madness, People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman, and Ghosts of the Tsunami.
Rachel Cusk is a British–Canadian novelist and writer.
Nikki Gemmell is a best-selling Australian author. She resides in Sydney, Australia.
Jonathan Myerson is a British dramatist and novelist, writing principally for television and radio. His partner is novelist Julie Myerson.
Deborah Levy is a British novelist, playwright and poet. She initially concentrated on writing for the theatre – her plays were staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company – before focusing on prose fiction. Her early novels included Beautiful Mutants, Swallowing Geography and Billy & Girl. Her more recent fiction has included the Booker-shortlisted novels Swimming Home and Hot Milk, as well as the Booker-longlisted The Man Who Saw Everything and the short story collection Black Vodka.
Marianne Phoebe Elliott is a British theatre director and producer who works on the West End and Broadway. She is the recipient of various accolades including three Laurence Olivier Awards and three Tony Awards. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2018 Birthday Honours for her services to theatre.
Kate Kellaway is an English journalist and literary critic who writes for The Observer.
Tessa Jane Hadley is a British author, who writes novels, short stories and nonfiction. Her writing is realistic and often focuses on family relationships. Her novels have twice reached the longlists of the Orange Prize and the Wales Book of the Year, and in 2016, she won the Hawthornden Prize, as well as one of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes for fiction. The Windham-Campbell judges describe her as "one of English's finest contemporary writers" and state that her writing "brilliantly illuminates ordinary lives with extraordinary prose that is superbly controlled, psychologically acute, and subtly powerful." As of 2016, she is professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University.
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