Susan Sellers
| Susan Sellers | |
|---|---|
| Born | 01 April 1963 |
| Citizenship | British |
| Nationality | British |
| Fields | English literature |
| Institutions | University of St Andrews |
| Alma mater |
University of London University of Paris |
| Doctoral students | Martin McQuillan, Beth Wright |
| Known for | novels, criticism |
| Notable awards |
Arts and Humanities Research Council Award 2005 Canongate Prize 2002 |
Susan Sellers is a British author, translator, editor and novelist. She is Professor of English and Related Literature at the University of St Andrews, and co-General Editor of the Cambridge University Press edition of the writings of Virginia Woolf. Sellers' first novel, Vanessa and Virginia, is a fictionalised account of the life of Vanessa Bell and of her complex relationship with her sister (Two Ravens, 2008 and Harcourt, New York). It has also been translated into sixteen languages, including Chinese (Nanjing University Press, 2012), Spanish (emece, 2011), Turkish (Sel, 2011), French (editions autrement, 2011), Swedish (Ordfront, 2010) and Dutch (Artemis, 2009), and was adapted for the stage by Elizabeth Wright in 2009, touring in the UK, France, Germany and Poland and culminating in a 3-week run at Riverside Studios, London (Moving Stories Theatre, see references). Her second novel, Given the Choice, is set in the contemporary art and music worlds, focusses on a strong and contentious central character, Marion, and gives the reader a choice of three possible endings. As the cover explains, "Given the Choice is a novel about growing older and growing up, about making choices and learning to live with them."
Sellers gained her PhD from the University of London in 1992, having previously received a Diplôme d'Etudes Approfondies from the University of Paris (Sorbonne). While in Paris, Sellers became involved with leading French feminist writers, and has written on their work (see, for example, "Language and Sexual Difference" [Macmillan, 1995]). She has worked especially closely with Hélène Cixous, and has been influential in introducing her work to the English-speaking world, in books such as "The Hélène Cixous Reader" (Routledge, 1994), "Hélène Cixous: Authorship, Autobiography and Love" (Polity and Blackwell, 1996), "Hélène Cixous: Live Theory (with Ian Blyth, Continuum, 2004), and in translations such "Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing" (with Sarah Cornell, Columbia University Press, 1993) and "Coming to Writing and Other Essays" (with Sarah Cornell, Deborah Jenson and Ann Liddle, Harvard University Press, 1991).
Sellers' work has been oriented towards women's writing. Her "Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women's Fiction" (Palgrave, 2001) is an investigation into the ongoing resonance of myth and fairy tale for contemporary women's fiction, drawing on material by Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Bruno Bettelheim, Roland Barthes, Jack Zipes and Marina Warner, as well as French feminists Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, to read works by such writers as A. S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Anne Rice, Michèle Roberts, Emma Tennant and Fay Weldon. Sellers has also written on and edited a number of collections concerned with feminist theory and criticism, including "A History of Feminist Literary Criticism" (with Gill Plain, Cambridge University Press, 2007) and "Feminist Criticism: Theory and Practice" (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991).
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