The Estate of Fay Weldon

Novelist, playwright and screenwriter Fay Weldon was brought up in New Zealand and returned to the United Kingdom when she was ten. She read Economics and Psychology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and worked briefly for the Foreign Office in London, then as a journalist, and then as an advertising copywriter. She later gave up her career in advertising, and began to write full-time. Her first novel, THE FAT WOMAN’S JOKE, was published in 1967. She was Chair of the Judges for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1983, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews in 1990. In 2001 she was awarded a CBE.

Fay Weldon’s work includes over thirty novels, seven collections of short stories, several children’s books, non-fiction books, magazine articles and a number of plays written for television, radio and the stage, including the pilot episode for the television series Upstairs Downstairs.

Fay’s memoir, AUTO DA FAY, was released in 2002 by HarperCollins, who also published her latest non-fiction work WHAT MAKES WOMEN HAPPY in 2006. Quercus published THE STEPMOTHER’S DIARY in 2008. Her novel CHALCOT CRESCENT was published in 2009 by Corvus, followed by KEHUA! in 2010. Head of Zeus published HABITS OF THE HOUSE, the first book of her Love & Inheritance trilogy, in 2012, followed by LONG LIVE THE KING and THE NEW COUNTESS in 2013.

At the start of 2015, Head of Zeus released a new anthology of selected short stories by Fay. The collection, MISCHIEF, also includes her novella, The Ted Dreams. In 2016, head of Zeus published the novel BEFORE THE WAR.

Fay was a Professor at Bath Spa University, where she taught creative writing. She appeared frequently on TV and radio.

Her novel DEATH OF SHE DEVIL (2017, Head of Zeus) is a follow up to her 1983 classic, THE LIFE AND LOVES OF A SHE DEVIL.

In 2018 Head of Zeus published WHY WILL NO-ONE PUBLISH MY NOVEL?: A Handbook for the Rejected Writer, and AFTER THE PEACE, the follow up to BEFORE THE WAR.

PRIZES AND AWARDS
1979 Booker Prize for Fiction (shortlist) Praxis
1996 PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award Wicked Women
2001 CBE