Michèle Roberts

A former food columnist for the New Statesman, Michèle Roberts has always written about food and cookery in her novels and short stories. Half-French and half-English, she learned to cook at her grandparents' home in Normandy. She is the author of fifteen highly acclaimed novels, including Daughters of the House (shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction). She is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, a Chevalier de l'ordre des arts et des lettres and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. As a republican, she turned down an OBE in 2003.