Sarah Waters

Sarah Waters was born in Neyland, Pembrokeshire, Wales in 1966. She later moved to Middlesbrough when she was eight years old.

Her debut work was the Victorian picaresque Tipping the Velvet, published by Virago in 1998. The novel took 18 months to write. The book takes its title from Victorian slang for cunnilingus. Waters describes the novel as a "very upbeat [...] kind of a romp".

Waters's second book, Affinity, was published a year after her first, in 1999. The novel, also set in the Victorian era, centres on the world of Victorian Spiritualism. While finishing her debut novel, Waters had been working on an academic paper on spiritualism. She combined her interests in spiritualism, prisons, and the Victorian era in Affinity, which tells the story of the relationship between an upper-middle-class woman and an imprisoned spiritualist.

In 2002, the novel was adapted into a three-part television serial of the same name for BBC Two. It has been translated into at least 24 languages, including Chinese, Latvian, Hungarian, Korean and Slovenian.

Fingersmith was published in 2002. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize.

Waters was named as one of Granta's 20 Best of Young British Writers in January 2003. The same year, she received the South Bank Award for Literature. She was named Author of the Year at the 2003 British Book Awards. In both 2006 and 2009 she won "Writer of the Year" at the annual Stonewall Awards. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009. She holds an honorary degree from Lancaster University. She has featured on the Pinc List of leading Welsh LGBT figures.

Fingersmith was made into a serial for BBC One in 2005, starring Sally Hawkins, Elaine Cassidy and Imelda Staunton. Waters approved of the adaptation, calling it "a really good quality show", and said it was "very faithful to the book. It was spookily faithful to the book at times, which was exciting." The novel was later adapted again by South Korean director Park Chan-wook into the 2016 film The Handmaiden, which set the story in South Korea in the 1930s.

In 2005, Waters received the highest bid (£1,000) during a charity auction in which the prize was the opportunity to have the winner's name immortalised in The Night Watch. The auction featured many notable British novelists, and the name of the bidder, author Martina Cole, appeared in Waters' novel.

The Night Watch was adapted for television by BBC2 and broadcast on 12 July 2011.

She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to literature.

JULY 21: Sarah Waters (1966-)

Happy birthday, Sarah Waters!! The Welsh author and queen of lesbian historical fiction turns 51 today! In an interview with The Independent, Sarah proclaims, “I pay attention to women's secret...