Serena Mackesy
Serena Mackesy (born c. 1960s) is a British novelist and journalist who lives in London.
Life and education
Serena Mackesy is the daughter of the Scots-born Oxford military historian Piers Mackesy. She is also the granddaughter on her mother's side of the novelist Margaret Kennedy and on her father's side of Leonora Mackesy (born 1902), who wrote Harlequin romances as Leonora Starr and Dorothy Rivers. She grew up on the Oxfordshire/Gloucestershire borders and went to school in Oxford, where she gained a University of London degree in English literature from Manchester College, Oxford.[1]
Mackesy worked variously in offices, as an English teacher and on door-to-door sales before, as she told an interviewer in 2000: "I arrived at The Independent as a temp to cover for the secretary on the TV listings page... for a couple of weeks, realised I'd found somewhere I enjoyed and somehow never left.... I think the first writing I did was little potted movie previews on the weekend TV spread. The first thing anyone seemed to actually notice was a small daily bar review I used to write when the paper had a London supplement."[2] By 1997 she was a regular columnist.[3]
As a child Serena Mackesy was a keen rider. She has described Malta as her favourite place in the world.[4]
Novels
Mackesy established her reputation with the novel The Temp (1999).[5] This went into the Sunday Times Top Ten on publication.[6] Since then she has published Virtue (2000),[7] Simply Heaven (2002),[8] and Hold My Hand (2008).[9]
Work of Mackesy's has been translated into French, Italian, Dutch, German, Japanese and Thai. Writers she admires include Kurt Vonnegut, C. S. Lewis (Narnia series), John Donne and the "other" Elizabeth Taylor (Angel).[10]
References
- ^ Author site: Retrieved 2 April 2011.
- ^ Authortrek interview: Retrieved 2 April 2011.
- ^ The Independent website. Retrieved 2 April 2011.
- ^ Author site.
- ^ London: Century. ISBN 0712680799. Bibliographical details from British Library Integrated Catalogue Retrieved 2 April 2011.
- ^ Publisher's website. Retrieved 2 April 2011.
- ^ London: Century. ISBN 0712684298.
- ^ London: Century. ISBN 0712684344.
- ^ London: Constable. ISBN 1845296397.
- ^ Author site.