Fay Weldon passes away aged 91

In a statement, Fay Weldon's family announced:

'It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Fay Weldon (CBE), author, essayist and playwright. She died peacefully this morning 4th January 2023.'

Fay was a novelist, playwright and screenwriter brought up in New Zealand and the United Kingdom from age 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. Her 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.

As The New York Times reports:

'Her death was confirmed by her son Dan Weldon, who said she had experienced strokes and had some health problems. He said she died “very peacefully” in a nursing home in Northampton, England.

While she was too weak to hold a pen, she was still writing in her head, Mr. Weldon said. “She was thinking about writing poetry,” he said. “She was a writer to the very end.”'

Read the full obituary here.