SOURCE: Winterson, Jeanette, and Audrey Bilger. “Jeanette Winterson: The Art of Fiction CL.” Paris Review 39, no. 145 (winter 1997): 69–112.

In the following interview, Winterson discusses her approach to fiction, her aesthetic concerns and artistic development, and her preoccupation with religious, gender, and sexual issues.

“I cannot recall a time when I did not know I was special,” writes Jeanette Winterson at the beginning of her fictionalized autobiography, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. And, indeed, the facts of her life have supported that view. Born in Manchester in 1959, Winterson was adopted by Pentecostal evangelist Constance Brownrigg and her husband, John William Winterson, a factory worker. From her earliest years she was groomed by her mother and church to be a missionary, and her first forays into the world of letters were the sermons she began preaching at the age of eight. Her awareness of herself as different from others was...