Sarah Dunant

Sarah Dunant (born 8th August 1950)  is a writer, broadcaster and critic. She was a founding vice patron of the  Orange Prize for women's fiction, sits on the editorial board of the  Royal Academy magazine, and reviews for  The Times,  The Guardian, and  The Independent on Sunday. She teaches creative writing at  The Faber Academy in London and biennially at  Washington University in St. Louis on their renaissance studies course. She is also a creative writing fellow at  Oxford Brookes University. She has two daughters and lives in  London and  Florence. ==Early career[ edit] ==

Dunant was born in London. She attended Godolphin and Latymer School and studied history at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she was heavily involved in theatre and the Footlights review. After a brief spell working for the BBCshe spent much of her twenties traveling (Japan, India, Asia and Central and South America) before starting to write. Her first two novels, along with a BBC television series, were written with a friend. After this she went solo.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Since then she has written ten novels, three screenplays and edited two books of essays. She has worked in television and radio as a producer and presenter: most notably for BBC Television where for seven years (1989–1996) she presented the live nightly culture programme The Late Show. Subsequently she presented the BBC Radio 3 radio programme Night Waves. ==Books<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;direction:ltr;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;-webkit-transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;-webkit-transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;visibility:visible;">] ==

<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Sarah Dunant's work ranges over a number of genres and eras. Her narratives are hard to categorise due to their inventive treatment of time and space, and a favoured device of hers is to run two or more plot strands concurrently, as she does to in Mapping the Edge. A common concern running through her work is women's perceptions and points of view, with other themes included.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Her first eight novels were broadly written within a thriller form. Their setting was contemporary and allowed her to explore such themes such as the drug trade, surrogacy, terrorism, animals rights, cosmetic surgery and sexual violence. Then in 2000 an extended visit to Florence rekindled her first love: History. The novels which followed were extensively researched historical explorations of what it was like to be a woman within the Italian renaissance. The trilogy looked at marriage, the cultural of courtesans and the life of cloistered nuns. They were all international best sellers translated into over 30 languages.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Her most recent book Blood and Beauty, to be published in 2013, centres around a depiction of Italy's Borgia dynasty. It sets out to offer a historically accurate vision of a family who have been much maligned by history. Dunant states in her afterword that she plans to write a second, concluding novel about the family. ==Bibliography<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;direction:ltr;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;-webkit-transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;-webkit-transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;">] ==

==Awards<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;direction:ltr;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;-webkit-transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;-webkit-transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;visibility:visible;">] ==
 * Exterminating Angels (co-written with Peter Busby as Peter Dunant), 1984
 * Intensive Care (co-written with Peter Busby as Peter Dunant), 1986
 * Snow Storms in a Hot Climate, 1988
 * Birthmarks, 1991
 * Fatlands, 1993
 * The War of the Words: The Political Correctness Debate, 1994
 * Under My Skin, 1995
 * The Age of Anxiety, 1997
 * Transgressions, 1997
 * Mapping the Edge, 1999
 * The Birth of Venus, 2003
 * In the Company of the Courtesan, 2006
 * Sacred Hearts, 2009
 * Blood and Beauty, 2013

==Views<span class="mw-editsection" style="-webkit-user-select:none;font-size:small;margin-left:1em;line-height:1em;display:inline-block;white-space:nowrap;padding-right:0.25em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;direction:ltr;"><span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;-webkit-transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;">[ edit<span class="mw-editsection-bracket" style="transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;-webkit-transition:color100msease-out,margin100msease-out;visibility:visible;">] ==
 * 1993 Silver Dagger Award, for Crime Fiction, winner, Fatlands
 * 2010 Walter Scott Prize, for historical fiction, shortlist, Sacred Hearts

<p style="line-height:19.1875px;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:sans-serif;font-size:13px;">Sarah Dunant believes the Roman Catholic Church needs to reform, to deal with wide-ranging problems. Dunant believes modernising one area of Roman Catholicism may lead to an unstoppable movement to modernise more.