- Sara Maitland
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Sara Maitland Born Sarah Maitland
February 27, 1950
London, United KingdomOccupation writer of short stories, novelist, amateur theologian Nationality British Period 1978–present Genres nonfiction, fiction, theology, gardening Subjects Christianity, saints, lives of women, mythology, fairy tales Notable work(s) Daughter of Jerusalem, "True North"/"Far North" (short story), A Big Enough God, A Book of Silence Notable award(s) Somerset Maugham Award (1979) - Daughter of Jerusalem
Bristol Festival of Ideas Book Prize (nomination, 2009) - A Book of Silence
BBC National Short Story Award (runner up, 2009) - "Moss Witch"
Influences- The Bible, Chaucer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Angela Carter, George Lamming,[1] Annie Dillard, Paul Davies
saramaitland.comSara Maitland (born 27 February 1950, London) is a British writer and feminist. An accomplished novelist, she is also known for her short stories. Her work has a magic realist tendency.
Contents
Biography
Originally spelt Sarah Maitland, she was the second of six children to an upper-class London family,[2] which she has described as "very open and noisy".[3] In her childhood she went to school in a small Wiltshire town[4] and attended a girls' boarding school from age twelve until her admission to university. Maitland thought this school a terrible place and became very excitable.[5]
Growing up, Maitland developed a wild reputation: in 1966 she scandalised one of her brothers by winning a foot race in a very short cotton dress.[6] On entering Oxford University in 1968 to study English, she shared a house with future US President Bill Clinton[7][8] and suffered from problems of mental disarray and inability to carry out routine tasks.[9] During her college years, Maitland was taken to a mental hospital on several occasions for this reason,[10] but she completed her course and soon turned to writing.
Maitland became regarded as one of those at the vanguard of the 1970s feminist movement and is often described as a feminist writer. Religion is another theme in much of her work: from 1972 to 1993 she was married to an Anglican vicar. In 1993 she became a Roman Catholic.[11] In 1995 she worked with Stanley Kubrick on the film A.I. Artificial Intelligence.
She has two grown-up children.[12] Polly Lee is an aspiring actress and Adam Lee is beginning a career as a photographer. Since Adam left college, Maitland has moved towards a solitary, prayerful life[13] in a variety of locations, first of all on the Isle of Skye and ultimately in her present house in Galloway. She says today that she wants to avoid most of the comforts of life, especially those that intrude into her quest for silence such as mobile phones, radio, television and even her son.[14] She has described these changes in her life and the experiences leading to them in the autobiographical "A Book of Silence".
Maitland's 2003 collection of short stories, On Becoming a Fairy Godmother, is a fictional celebration of the menopausal woman, whilst the title story of 2008's Far North was originally published as "True North" in her first collection Telling Tales and was made into a film of the same title in 2007. The rest of Far North collects dark mythological tales from around the world.
Bibliography
Novels
- Daughter of Jerusalem 1978
- also published as The Languages of Love
- Virgin Territory 1984
- Arky Types 1987 (with Michelene Wandor)
- Three Times Table 1991
- Home Truths 1993
- published as Ancestral Truths in the United States
- Hagiographies 1998
- Brittle Joys 1999
Short story collections
- Telling Tales 1983
- A Book of Spells 1987
- Women Fly When Men Aren't Watching 1992
- Angel and Me (for Holy Week) 1996
- On Becoming A Fairy Godmother Maia, 2003
- Far North & Other Dark Tales, 2008
Non-fiction
- A Map of the New Country: Women and Christianity, 1983
- Vesta Tilley Virago, 1986
- A Big-Enough God: Artful Theology Mowbray, 1994
- Virtuous Magic: Women Saints and Their Meanings (with Wendy Mulford), 1998
- Novel Thoughts: Religious Fiction in Contemporary Culture Erasmus Institute, 1999
- Awesome God: Creation, Commitment and Joy SPCK, 2002
- Stations of the Cross (with Chris Gollon), 2009
- A Book of Silence Granta, 2008 (hardcover); 2009 (paperback)
As editor
- Very Heaven: Looking Back at the 1960s, 1988
- The Rushdie File 1990 (with Lisa Appignanesi)
Notes
- Lorna Sage (1999) The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English, Cambridge University Press.
References
- ^ Crossing Borders
- ^ A Book of Silence, By Sara Maitland Reviewed by Michele Roberts
- ^ Maitland, Sara; The Swans
- ^ Maitland, Sara (editor); Very Heaven: Looking Back at the 1960s; p. 5. ISBN 0860689581
- ^ Maitland; Very Heaven; p. 4
- ^ Maitland; Very Heaven; p. 5
- ^ Hoffman, Matthew; "The Bill Clinton We Knew at Oxford: Apart from smoking dope (and not inhaling), what else did he learn over here? College friends share their memories with Matthew Hoffman"; in The Independent, 11 October 1992
- ^ "Clinton's London Affair Just SAX"; in Los Angeles Times; July 4, 1993; p. 24
- ^ “Is there a link between madness and creativity?“; in The Independent on Sunday, March 18, 2007
- ^ “Is there a link between madness and creativity?“
- ^ Brown, Andrew; "Church Group Reported for Sex Bias"; in The Independent, 9 April 1993
- ^ About Sara
- ^ Sara Maitland: A Very Unlikely Modern Hermit
- ^ All Quiet on the Western Front
External links
- Sara Maitland at Contemporary Writers
- Orlando Project
Categories:- 1950 births
- British feminists
- British women writers
- Converts to Roman Catholicism from Anglicanism
- Feminist writers
- Living people
- Roman Catholic writers
- Women short story writers
- Women novelists
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