Sexual orientation

Winterson, Jeanette (1959- ), British novelist, best known for the experimental and sometimes controversial ways in which her fiction explores such issues as gender roles and sexual orientation. Winterson was born in Manchester, England, and adopted by religious parents who prepared her to become a preacher. A lesbian affair at the age of 15, however, estranged her from her family, and she left home. Working in various jobs, she continued her education, eventually studying English at Saint …

…counterparts, and marks a decisive shift in Winterson's style toward a fractured and incantatory rhetoric. Her next book, Written on the Body (1992), charts a love triangle, in which the gender of the main character is not specified. Art & Lies (1994) portrays a gathering between characters called Handel, Sappho, and Picasso, with no plot and little sense of time or place. Winterson's first collection of short stories, The World and Other Places, was published in 1999.