| Susan Sellers | |
| Citizenship: | British |
| Nationality: | British |
| Alma Mater: | University of London University of Paris |
| Field: | Literature in English; Creative Writing |
| Work Institutions: | University of St Andrews |
| Prizes: | Arts and Humanities Research Council Award Leverhulme Research Fellowship Canongate Prize |
Susan Sellers is a British author, translator, editor and novelist. She was the first woman to be made a professor in the field of English literature as well as creative writing at the University of St Andrews,[1] and is co-General Editor of the Cambridge University Press edition of the writings of Virginia Woolf.[2]
Sellers' first novel, Vanessa and Virginia, is a fictionalised account of the life of Vanessa Bell and of her complex relationship with her sister Virginia Woolf.[3] Sellers' second novel, Given the Choice,[4] is set in the contemporary art and music worlds. Her most recent novel Firebird is about the Russian dancer Lydia Lopokova, her love affair and marriage to British economist John Maynard Keynes, and her relationship with the Bloomsbury Group.
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, for example, Language and Sexual Difference (Macmillan, 1995).[5] She has worked 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),[6] Hélène Cixous: Authorship, Autobiography and Love (Polity and Blackwell, 1996),[7] Hélène Cixous: Live Theory (Continuum, 2004), and in translations such as Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing (Columbia University Press, 1993) and Coming to Writing and Other Essays (Harvard University Press, 1991).
Sellers' work has been oriented towards women's writing. Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women's Fiction (Palgrave, 2001)[8] 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)[9] and Feminist Criticism: Theory and Practice (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991).
Sellers' interest in the writings of Virginia Woolf has led to her involvement in the Cambridge University Press edition of Woolf's writings which received a major Arts and Humanities Research Council Award in 2005 to support post-doctoral researchers. The edition aims for transparency in its mapping of the variants between the first British edition of Woolf's texts and those she subsequently oversaw – in particular the first American publication. It also aims to provide full annotation to Woolf's densely allusive prose. In addition to co-directing the project, Sellers also co-edited Virginia Woolf's The Waves (with Michael Herbert) [10] and co-wrote the 'Introduction' to Jacob's Room with Stuart N. Clarke. With Sue Roe, Sellers co-edited and contributed to The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf (Cambridge University Press, 2000).[11] Sellers edited the second edition of The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf in 2010.[12] Sellers' novel, Vanessa and Virginia, is in part a fictional biography of Virginia Woolf. It has been translated into 16 languages, including Chinese, Japanese and Persian, and was adapted for the stage by Elizabeth Wright and directed by Emma Gersch in 2009. The play premiered in Aix-en-Provence in 2010. Throughout, Sellers has been particularly interested in the creative process of writing. This is reflected in three collections published by The Women's Press – Delighting the Heart: A Notebook by Women Writers (1988), Taking Reality by Surprise (1991), and Instead of Full Stops (1996) – as well as in the translated selections from The Writing Notebooks of Hélène Cixous (Continuum, 2004).[13] For this latter project, Sellers was awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2001–2002, which she held as a Visiting Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
Sellers now combines academic research with work as a novelist. In 2012 she was elected a senior member of St Catharine's College, Cambridge and in 2020 of Robinson College, Cambridge.