“Hold in, hold in, one crack and the wall is breached. I need now to be finite, self-contained, to stop this bacterial grief dividing and multiplying till its weight is the weight of the world. Bacteria: agents of putrefaction. My father's decay lodged in me.”

English author

Jeanette Winterson is an English author. She is known for her fiction, especially her debut novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, a semi-autobiographical story about a lesbian growing up in an English Pentecostal community. Her later novels often explore gender and sexual identity, and her more recent work turns to the relationship between people and technology. Her books have been translated into nearly 20 languages, and she also broadcasts and teaches creative writing.