Celia Brayfield Explained

Celia Brayfield is an English author, academic and cultural commentator.

Biography

Brayfield was born in the north London suburb of Wembley Park. She won a place at St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, West London, and spent a year as a foreign student in France, at the Universitaire de Grenoble, studying French language and literature.

She was a journalist for several years and published her first book in 1985.

In 2023, she is a lecturer at Bath Spa University.[1] Between 1988 and 2003 she was a trustee of Gingerbread. From 2013 to 2016 she was a trustee of the Friends of Watlington Library.

She has one daughter and lives in Dorset.

Career

During her first career as a journalist, she specialized in media issues, with columns in the Evening Standard and The Times as well as contributions to many other newspapers and magazines.

Following her childhood role model, Robert Louis Stevenson, Brayfield decided to begin her writing career as a journalist and joined Nova[2] magazine as a trainee sub-editor. She progressed to The Observer as assistant to the women's editor and moved to the Evening Standard. She was hired as a media columnist by Simon Jenkins in 1974 and moved to The Times as a television critic in 1982.

After the birth of her daughter Chloe in 1980, Brayfield decided to write a novel. Her Fleet Street experience of celebrity culture led to her first book as sole author of Glitter: The Truth About Fame, a non-fiction study commissioned by feminist editor Carmen Callil at Chatto & Windus. Shortly afterward, Callil commissioned Brayfield's first novel, Pearls. Her novels have been optioned by film producers including Cruise-Wagner/Paramount.[3] After the success of her first novel she focused on contemporary social comedies set in millennial London and its suburbs.

She has taught at the Arvon Foundation and Tŷ Newydd and founded W4W, a writers' workshop in West London. Until 2003 she was co-founder and co-director of the National Academy of Writing, which was subsequently linked to the University of Central England.

In 2005, she joined the staff of Brunel University London[4] to set up the creative writing program, becoming a reader in 2006 and an associate reader in 2015. She is also a senior lecturer at Bath Spa University and a member of the Higher Education Committee of the National Association of Writers in Education.[5]

Brayfield developed a growing interesting in how writers learn to write while doing the rounds of promotion tours and literary festivals. Audience questions led to a series of lectures which were the foundation for Bestseller: Secrets of Successful Writing commissioned by Victoria Barnsley at Fourth Estate.

Brayfield has judged several national literary awards, including the Betty Trask Award, the Macmillan Silver Pen Award and the Authors Club First Novel Prize. She served on the committee of management of The Society of Authors from 1995 to 1998.

Publications

Fiction:

Non-Fiction:

Academic

Journalism - selected articles include:

External links

Notes and References

  1. https://bathspa.academia.edu/CeliaBrayfield Bath Spa University website, Retrieved 2023-06-11
  2. Web site: Remembering Nova . www.londonmet.ac.uk . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20071128090825/http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/thewomenslibrary/whats-on/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/nova.cfm . 2007-11-28.
  3. News: Variety. Fleming. Michael. 6 February 2000. Cruise-Wagner Prods. Takes ‘Heart’ in Novel. 16 October 2015.
  4. Web site: People. 15 October 2015. Brunel University London. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304071634/http://www.brunel.ac.uk/people/celia-brayfield. 4 March 2016. dead.
  5. Web site: HE Committee: National Association of Writers in Education. www.nawe.co.uk. 2015-10-16.
  6. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/rebel-writers-the-accidental-feminists-9781448217502/ Bloomsbury website

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