Imagining Characters: Six Conversations about Women Writers

A.S. Byatt, 1936 - A.S. Byatt was born on August 24, 1936 in Sheffield, England to John Frederick Drabble, a judge, and Kathleen Marie (Bloor) Drabble. She received a B.A. from Newnham College, Cambridge in 1957, did graduate study at Bryn Mawr College from 1957-58 and attended Somerville College, Oxford from 1958-59. In 1959, she married economist Ian Charles Rayner Byatt, with whom she had two children. They divorced in 1969 and she later married Peter John Duffy, and they also had two children. Byatt was a staff member in the extra-mural department at the University of London from 1962-71. From 1968-69, she was also a part-time lecturer in the liberal studies department of the Central School of Art and Design, London. She was a lecturer at University College from 1972-80 and then senior lecturer from 1981-83. She became a full-time writer in 1983. She has also been a member of the British Broadcasting Corp. Social Effects of Television Advisory Group from 1974-77, a member of Communications and Cultural Studies Board of the Council for National Academic Awards in 1978 and a member of Kingman Committee on the Teaching of English from 1987-88. Byatt received the English Speaking Union fellowship in 1957-58, the Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1983, the Silver Pen Award for "Still Life," and the Booker Prize for "Possession: A Romance" in 1990. Rebecca Margaret Swift was born in London, England on January 10, 1964. She read English at New College, Oxford University. Her first job in publishing was at Lokamaya Press, which published translations from Urdu and Hindi. She was a junior editor at Virago Press from 1989 to 1995. In 1996, she and Hannah Griffiths founded The Literary Consultancy (TLC), a manuscript assessment agency offering detailed editorial feedback to anyone writing in English anywhere in the world. Swift received a master's degree in psychoanalytic studies at the Tavistock Clinic in 1999. She wrote and edited several books including Letters from Margaret: The Fascinating Story of Margaret Wheeler and Two Babies Swapped at Birth, Imagining Characters, and Poetic Lives: Dickinson. She also wrote poetry, which was published in numerous anthologies. She died of cancer on April 18, 2017 at the age of 53.