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Here in Britain, the lady-loving literati are
enjoying great success. g3 interviews and profiles
some inspiring creative talents…
AO`OVE/B3@A
Sarah Waters is a novelist, best known for raunchy
Victorian love story Tipping the Velvet …
g3: The Little Stranger (Waters’s latest novel) is audience as well. From talking to lesbian readers, it seems underworlds of the time, but it wasn’t popularly
your first book without any lesbian characters most of them really enjoyed the adaptation. It gave the known, so I thought it might be a good subject for a
in it. Can you tell us a bit about that? book this extra life. Tipping the Velvet was my first novel.
SW: That wasn’t a conscious move. People have novel and I wrote it in 1995, but it’s still been kept alive.
suggested that I was trying to get a more mainstream I’m very grateful for people’s enthusiasm for that book. g3: Which lesbian writers around at the
audience and that horrified me. It was much more moment do you particularly admire?
random. A story came along that I wanted to pursue. It g3: Do you think the success of your writing is SW: Ali Smith, Charlotte Mendelson, Joanna Briscoe,
is still very much about gender and farce: issues that inextricably linked to your sexuality? Stella Duffy – there’s some great writers around who
have always interested me in the other books. SW: The lesbian elements of my books are right there have real mainstream appeal and yet still retain a
at the heart of them, and I think in some ways that’s strong lesbian identity.
g3: We heard that you were planning to go worked in my favour because it’s got the books noticed.
back to writing about lesbians in your next g3: What are your thoughts on the recent
novel. Why do you say that? g3: Were you ever concerned that it might appointment of Carol Ann Duffy as Poet
SW: That’s a real passion of mine. I like going back to work the other way and put people off? Laureate?
the past and telling lesbian stories that haven’t been SW: Every time I’ve gained a bigger audience, I’ve just SW: I think there’s been a real shift in British literature
told much before, or just going back to the past and felt really surprised and pleased! I’ve been incredibly during the time I’ve been writing. It’s sort of opened out
imagining the stories. Although, having said that, I haven’t lucky with the novels in all sorts of ways, but not least and become more welcoming to a range of voices. Not
really got a clear idea about the next book at all yet. because I was writing very overt lesbian fiction at a time just in terms of sexuality, but in terms of ethnicity. Carol
when lesbian fiction was being welcomed into the Ann was a very well-respected writer already. I think it’s
g3: Many writers who happen to be lesbian mainstream a bit more. great that her poems were already being taught in
object to the label of ‘lesbian writer,’ but you schools, for example. At the end of the day, she’s just a
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seem to embrace it. Why is that? g3: When you were writing The Little Stranger great poet, so it’s no surprise that she’s being
SW: It’s never seemed to me to bring anything did you ever worry that you’d lose lesbian celebrated. But the fact that she’s got this lesbian
negative at all. I started out wanting to write a very readers? element to her writing is, for lesbian readers, very exciting.
lesbian novel, which was Tipping the Velvet, and I SW: Of course I knew that it might be an issue for
thought it would find lesbian readers, and that would some readers, because I’d become known as a lesbian g3: Tell us a bit about your involvement in the
be great. The fact that it found a wider audience was a writer, but I just hoped that the things that people like London Literature Festival.
surprise. It’s always been important to me to keep my about my novels are in this novel as well. Apart from, of SW: I’m doing an event at the Southbank, at the
lesbian readers as well. It’s where I started from and it’s course, the lesbian subject matter, it still seems to me Purcell Rooms, on Monday 6 July.
still high on my agenda to address lesbian issues. It to be very much a Sarah Waters novel. I feel a loyalty to
makes perfect sense to me to call me a ‘lesbian writer.’ my readers, but I also feel a loyalty to my stories, and I g3: Have you got any other appearances
don’t want to tell my stories which way to go, I want to coming up?
g3: How does it feel knowing that Tipping the let them lead me the way. SW: I’m doing a lot of festivals – I’ve already done
Velvet has achieved such cult status in the Hay-on-Wye. I’ll also be at Cheltenham (Tuesday 13
lesbian community? g3: What attracts you to historical novels? October), Edinburgh (Tuesday 25 August) and the Port
SW: I had such modest ambitions for the books, really. SW: Before I wrote fiction, I did a PhD thesis on lesbian Eliot Festival (Sunday 26 July) down in Devon.
It was great that Tipping the Velvet did find lesbian and gay historic fiction. I started out looking at the late
readers very quickly, in a small scale way. What really 19th century and was really interested in it as a period The Little Stranger is out now, published by
changed things was the television adaptation. It got the that had a lot of lesbian and gay potential. I knew that Virago. For more information visit
book a wider audience and also gained a bigger lesbian some academics knew about the lesbian and gay www.sarahwaters.com
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