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Although billed as a lesbian story and embraced by the lesbian community, Winterson prefers to not put Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in such a restrictive box. In an interview on her official website, Winterson says that Oranges is a book for “anyone interested in what happens at the frontiers of common-sense.”

For Winterson, a good story is a good story, no matter the subject matter. She says, “I've never understood why straight fiction is supposed to be for everyone, but anything with a gay character or that includes gay experience is only for queers.”

Rachel Holmes, a friend and fellow writer, told The Guardian that Winterson “believes art can belong to everyone.”

Winterson explained to Salon.com, “What we know about art is that it cuts through [barriers], and it doesn't matter whether you are an old guy or a spinster or a punk, it should be able to speak to you, you know, regardless of the experience.”

Winterson maintains that she will never write a sequel to her most well-known book. She feels that sequels are written when an author runs out of ideas, and “if [she] runs out of ideas [she'll] stop work.”

After the success of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Winterson continued to write. Unfortunately, the British press and public were not as welcoming of her new works. Titles such as Boating for Beginners and Written on the Body were not as well-received. Fellow author Michèle Roberts believes that Winterson's “middle period was about art for art's sake, language for language's sake; she became suspicious of storytelling.”

The poor reviews and media backlash took its toll on Winterson. “The '90s were a dark decade for me, in personal terms and in terms of the work I wanted to do,” Winterson told The Guardian. “I didn't know I could ever find my voice again; I thought I was destroyed. My writing used to be a place of joy and became a place of terror; I couldn't bear that.”

If the media were not trashing her books, they were digging in to her love life. In 1995, a Vanity Fair article ended up focusing mostly on Winterson's romantic affairs and experiences. This was not acceptable to Winterson, so she shot back at the public's appetite for knowledge of what went on in her bedroom.

“No one asks Iris Murdoch about her sex life,” Winterson wrote in her essay “The Semiotics of Sex,” published in her 1995 book, Art Objects. “Every interviewer I meet asks me about mine and what they do not ask they invent. I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.”

But by 2002, Winterson was once again a popular literary figure in England. That year she adapted her novel The.Powerbook for the stage. The production starred Saffron Burrows and played at the Royal National Theatre London as well as the Theatre de Chaillot in Paris.

In 2006 Winterson, who regularly writes for British newspapers like The Times and The Guardian, was named an Officer of the British Empire for her services in literature. Her most recent book, Tanglewreck, is a young adult novel that The Times has described as “an action-packed, imaginative tale involving travel through time and space.”

But Winterson has done more than write; in 2004, she opened Verde's, a deli and organic grocery store on the ground floor of her East London home. It took Winterson two years to restore her home and the space that would eventually become Verde's. Located in the Spitalfields area of London — a neighborhood that is now trendy, but was once home to the Jack the Ripper murders — Verde's sells olives, Italian cheeses, Parma ham and according to Winterson, “the best food that can be found.”

In an article she wrote for Good Housekeeping, Winterson explains why she chose to take on the Verde's project: “I realised I wanted a place where I would like to do my own shopping. A place that was a little island in the sea of corporate retailing.” For Winterson, Verde's is an outlet to stress the importance of taking the time to find and prepare good food. Winterson knows that her adventure in groceries will not threaten the supermarkets, nor will it “change the eating habits of Britain,” but as with her writing, she is doing something that she loves and believes in.

From her childhood of sneaking peeks at books in the outhouse to her international literary success to Verde's, it seems clear that Winterson is an outspoken woman who does what she wants and is willing to challenge those who misrepresent her. Pehraps her strict, religious upbringing created a powerhouse with a zest for life.

As she told The Guardian, “To me, life, for all its privations, is a luminous thing and you have to risk it.”

For more on Jeanette Winterson, visit her website at jeanettewinterson.com.

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