Rose Tremain | |
---|---|
Born | Rosemary Jane Thomson 2 August 1943 London, England |
Occupation | Novelist |
Language | English |
Alma mater | Sorbonne University of East Anglia (BA) |
Notable awards | Orange Prize (2008) Whitbread Award (1999) Prix Femina Étranger (1994) James Tait Black Memorial Prize (1992) Sunday Express Book of the Year (1989) Giles Cooper Award (1984) |
Dame Rose Tremain DBE FRSL (born 2 August 1943) is an English novelist, short story writer, and former Chancellor of the University of East Anglia. [1]
Rose Tremain was born Rosemary Jane Thomson on 2 August 1943 in London to Viola Mabel Thomson and Keith Nicholas Home Thomson. [2] Her paternal great-grandfather is William Thomson, who was Archbishop of York from 1862 to 1890. [3]
She was educated at Francis Holland School, Crofton Grange School, the Sorbonne (1961–1962) and the University of East Anglia (BA, English Literature). [4] She later went on to teach creative writing at the University of East Anglia from 1988 to 1995, and was appointed Chancellor in 2013. [5]
She married Jon Tremain in 1971 and they had one daughter, Eleanor, born in 1972, who became an actress. The marriage lasted about five years. Her second marriage, to theatre director Jonathan Dudley, in 1982, lasted about nine years; and she has been with Richard Holmes since 1992. [6] She lives in Thorpe St Andrew near Norwich in Norfolk. [7] [8] [9]
Her influences include William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies , and Gabriel García Márquez's 1967 novel 100 Years of Solitude and the magical realism style. [6]
She is a historical novelist who approaches her subjects "from unexpected angles, concentrating her attention on unglamorous outsiders." [4]
In 2009, she donated the short story The Jester of Astapovo to Oxfam's "Ox-Tales" project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the "Earth" collection. [10]
She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983. [2] Already Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), Tremain was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to writing. [11]
Carol Ann Shields was an American-born Canadian novelist and short story writer. She is best known for her 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the U.S. Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award in Canada.
Kamila Shamsie FRSL is a Pakistani and British writer and novelist who is best known for her award-winning novel Home Fire (2017). Named on Granta magazine's list of 20 best young British writers, Shamsie has been described by The New Indian Express as "a novelist to reckon with and to look forward to." She also writes for publications including The Guardian, New Statesman, Index on Censorship and Prospect, and broadcasts on radio.
Nicola Griffith is a British-American novelist, essayist, and teacher. She has won the Washington State Book Award (twice), Nebula Award, James Tiptree, Jr. Award, World Fantasy Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and six Lambda Literary Awards. In 2024 she was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
The University of East Anglia's Creative Writing Course was founded by Sir Malcolm Bradbury and Sir Angus Wilson in 1970. The M.A. has been regarded among the most prestigious in the United Kingdom.
Colm Tóibín is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet.
Malorie Blackman is a British writer who held the position of Children's Laureate from 2013 to 2015. She primarily writes literature and television drama for children and young adults. She has used science fiction to explore social and ethical issues, for example, her Noughts and Crosses series uses the setting of a fictional alternative Britain to explore racism. Blackman has been the recipient of many honours for her work, including the 2022 PEN Pinter Prize.
Jacqueline Margaret Kay,, is a Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her works Other Lovers (1993), Trumpet (1998) and Red Dust Road (2011). Kay has won many awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award in 1994, the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998 and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year Award in 2011.
Ali Smith CBE FRSL is a Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016 as "Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting".
Linda Grant is an English novelist and journalist.
Tamar Yellin is an English author and teacher who lives in Yorkshire. Her first novel, The Genizah at the House of Shepher, won the 2007 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.
Jane Harris is a British writer of fiction and screenplays. Her novels have been published in over 20 territories worldwide and translated into many different languages. Her most recent work is the novel Sugar Money which has been shortlisted for several literary prizes.
Sacred Country is a novel by English author Rose Tremain. It was published in 1992 by Sinclair-Stevenson and won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and Prix Femina étranger. It has been compared to Virginia Woolf's Orlando.
Susanna Mary Clarke is an English author known for her debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), a Hugo Award-winning alternative history. Clarke began Jonathan Strange in 1993 and worked on it during her spare time. For the next decade, she published short stories from the Strange universe, but it was not until 2003 that Bloomsbury bought her manuscript and began work on its publication. The novel became a best-seller.
Sarah Grace Perry is an English author. She has had four novels published: After Me Comes the Flood (2014), The Essex Serpent (2016), Melmoth (2018) and Enlightenment (2024). Her work has been translated into 22 languages. She was appointed Chancellor of the University of Essex in July 2023, officially starting in this role on 1 August 2023.
Hannah Kent is an Australian writer, known for two novels – Burial Rites (2013) and The Good People (2016). Her third novel, Devotion, was published in 2021.
Alix Hawley is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer. Her novel, All True Not a Lie In It, won the amazon.ca First Novel Award in 2015.
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.
Merivel: A Man of His Time is a novel by Rose Tremain, published in 2012. It is set in 17th century England, France and Switzerland and is a sequel to Restoration. It was short listed for the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction in 2013.
The Ribalow Prize is a literary prize awarded annually by Hadassah Magazine the best work of fiction in English on a Jewish theme.
The Gustav Sonata is a novel by English author Rose Tremain published in 2016 by Chatto & Windus.