Vanessa Walters | |
---|---|
Born | 1978 (age 46–47) London, England |
Education | Queen's College, London |
Alma mater | University College London |
Occupation(s) | Novelist, playwright and critic |
Notable work | Rude Girls |
Website | www |
Vanessa Walters (born 1978, [1] in London, United Kingdom) is an English novelist and playwright. She is also a commentator and critic. She is best known as the teenage novelist discovered to be writing a novel as a hobby to share with her school friends while she was being educated at Queen's College, London. [2] When discovered by teachers, the text was passed over to a literary agent, who quickly had Walters signed to a publishing company with a five-figure book deal even before she had left school.
The book, Rude Girls, made her a success, but instead of diving headlong into the literary world she continued her studies, progressing to studying law at University College London. [3] About Rude Girls, she said: "It was a book I really wanted to read, which didn't exist."
Rude Girls was acclaimed as an accurate portrayal of life in the North London Black community—it was a huge success straight across the board. While studying law, Walters found time to spend a year in Paris, France, and continue her writing. Her book The Best Things in Life was published in 1998 and explored the lives of young Black women struggling to balance friendship, work and relationships.
Her 2008 book Smoke Othello! is a collection of poems, short stories and plays about black experience in West London, born out of her time as the Writer in Residence for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Walters also performs her poetry, and she has written plays, with her works including Too Hot to Handle, Cold World, Caribbean Kitchen, Double Take, Changes and Michael X, produced by various English theater companies. Her commentary has also appeared on the guardian.co.uk website.
Her reviews have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Front Row , as well as Sky News, BBC Four (Television), The World , More4 (The Cinema Show) and Colourful Radio. [4]
Her articles have been published in The Guardian , New Statesman , The Voice and other outlets, including Pride Magazine , for which she writes a monthly column on topical issues for black women.
On 2 May 2023, her debut novel, The Nigerwife was published by Atria Books (A Simon and Schuster imprint). The book centers on a young woman who goes missing in Lagos, Nigeria, and her estranged auntie who will stop at nothing to find the truth. [5] The Nigerwife was selected as the Good Morning America 's May Book Club Pick. [6] [7] Amy Aniobi is developing an adaptation for the novel which has been optioned for a limited series by HBO. [8] [9]
The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, which was published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The winner of the Booker Prize receives £50,000, as well as international publicity that usually leads to a significant sales boost. When the prize was created, only novels written by Commonwealth, Irish, and South African citizens were eligible to receive the prize; in 2014, eligibility was widened to any English-language novel—a change that proved controversial.
Dame Jean Iris Murdoch was an Irish and British novelist and philosopher. Murdoch is best known for her novels about good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious. Her first published novel, Under the Net (1954), was selected in 1998 as one of Modern Library's 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Her 1978 novel The Sea, The Sea won the Booker Prize. In 1987, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II for services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked Murdoch twelfth on a list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
Zadie Smith is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.
Buchi Emecheta was a Nigerian writer who was the author of novels, plays, autobiography, and children's books. She first received notable critical attention for her 1974 novel, Second Class Citizen. Her other books include The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Emecheta has been characterized as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948".
Andrea Levy was an English author best known for the novels Small Island (2004) and The Long Song (2010). She was born in London to Jamaican parents, and her work explores topics related to British Jamaicans and how they negotiate racial, cultural and national identities.
Miranda Jane Seymour is an English literary critic, novelist and biographer of Robert Graves, Mary Shelley and Jean Rhys among others. Seymour is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She elected to resign from the Royal Society of Literature in December 2023. She was formerly married to Andrew Sinclair, and Anthony Gottlieb and is now married to Ted Lynch.
Pamela Hansford Johnson, Baroness Snow, was an English novelist, playwright, poet, literary and social critic.
Elizabeth Harrower was an Australian novelist and short story writer. She has been considered "one of the great novelists of Sydney". Much of her work tackles the theme of domestic abuse, particularly the psychological abuse of vulnerable women at the hands of their manipulative, deceitful and tyrannical male partners.
Sefi Atta is a Nigerian-American novelist, short-story writer, playwright and screenwriter. Her books have been translated into many languages, her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC, and her stage plays have been performed internationally. Awards she has received include the 2006 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the 2009 Noma Award for Publishing in Africa.
Gillian Schieber Flynn is an American author, screenwriter, and producer, best known for her thriller and mystery novels Sharp Objects (2006), Dark Places (2009), and Gone Girl (2012), all of which have received critical acclaim. Her works have been translated into 40 languages, and by 2016, Gone Girl had sold over 15 million copies worldwide.
Eleanor Catton is a New Zealand novelist and screenwriter. Born in Canada, Catton moved to New Zealand as a child and grew up in Christchurch. She completed a master's degree in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her award-winning debut novel, The Rehearsal, written as her Master's thesis, was published in 2008, and has been adapted into a 2016 film of the same name. Her second novel, The Luminaries, won the 2013 Booker Prize, making Catton the youngest author ever to win the prize and only the second New Zealander. It was subsequently adapted into a television miniseries, with Catton as screenwriter. In 2023, she was named on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list.
Louise Emma Joseph, known professionally as Dreda Say Mitchell, is a British novelist, broadcaster, journalist and campaigner. She was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2020 for her services to literature and educational work in prison.
Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous Italian novelist. Ferrante's books, originally published in Italian, have been translated into many languages. Her four-book series of Neapolitan Novels are her most widely known works. Time magazine called Ferrante one of the 100 most influential people in 2016.
Brit Bennett is an American writer based in Los Angeles. Her debut novel The Mothers (2016) was a New York Times best-seller. Her second novel, The Vanishing Half (2020), was also a New York Times best-seller, and was chosen as a Good Morning America Book Club selection. The Vanishing Half was selected as one of The New York Times' ten best books of 2020, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction.
Imachibundu Oluwadara Onuzo is a Nigerian novelist. Her first novel, The Spider King's Daughter, won a Betty Trask Award, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Commonwealth Book Prize, and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Etisalat Prize for Literature.
Annabel Abbs is an English writer and novelist.
Yomi Adegoke is a British journalist and author.
Abimbola "Abi" Daré is a Nigerian author and public speaker who now lives in Essex, England. In 2018 she won the Bath Novel Award, and was a finalist in the Literary Consultancy Pen Factor 2018. Her debut novel The Girl With The Louding Voice was published in 2020 to critical acclaim.
Amy Aniobi is a Nigerian-American writer, producer and director. She was the head writer and co-executive producer of Insecure and was also an executive producer for the HBO special 2 Dope Queens. Aniobi signed a two-year overall deal with HBO in 2019.
The Nigerwife is a 2023 novel by British writer Vanessa Walters. It was published on 2 May 2023 by Atria Books. The book centers on a young woman who goes missing in Lagos, Nigeria, and her estranged auntie who will stop at nothing to find the truth.
Lance Cleland, * "Vanessa Walters", Tin House.