Wendy Perriam

About the Author

Wendy Perriam has been writing since the age of 5, completing her first book, A Pony At Last, on her 12th birthday (sheer wish-fulfilment, since the only pony in her life was the milkman’s ancient nag!) Expelled from boarding school for heresy and told she was in Satan’s power – a terrifying verdict for a devout Catholic child whose father had spent 5 years training to be a priest - she escaped to Oxford, where she read History and also trod the boards. There followed a variety of offbeat jobs, ranging from artist’s model to carnation-disbudder to carer for the elderly, to researcher on medieval cookery, all of which provided entrées into unknown worlds that find echoes in her work. A former tutor in Creative Writing at Morley College, Lambeth, Wendy now teaches privately.

Her 18 novels have been acclaimed for their psychological insight and their power to disturb, divert and intrigue, while her 8 short-story collections explore themes of loss, rebellion and escape. She also writes poetry, which has been published in various collections and anthologies, has contributed articles and stories to many newspapers and magazines, and was a regular contributor to radio programmes such as Stop the Week and Fourth Column.

Wendy feels that her many conflicting life experiences – strict convent-school discipline and swinging-sixties wildness, marriage and divorce, infertility and motherhood, 9-to-5 conformity and periodic Bedlam – have helped shape her as a writer. ‘Writing allows for shadow-selves. I’m both the staid conformist matron and the slag; the well-organised author toiling at her desk and the madwoman shrieking in a straitjacket.’