Lisa Appignanesi (born 4 January 1946) is a British writer, historian, campaigner for freedom of the press and president of English PEN.

[edit] Early life and education

Appignanesi was born Elżbieta Borenztejn on 4 January 1946 in Łódź, Poland. She grew up in Paris and Montreal,^[1] where she studied at McGill University and worked as a Features Editor for The McGill Daily.^[2] While studying at McGill she spent one summer working in the Canadian press, and another as a student at the Sorbonne, where she funded her studies by working as a waitress.^[3] She graduated with a BA in English in 1966 and gained her MA the following year with a thesis on Edgar Allan Poe, at the same time lecturing at Loyola College.^[2] She moved to Britain in 1967 where she did a DPhil in Comparative Literature at the University of Sussex.^[2] During this period she spent some time in Paris and Vienna and wrote a thesis on Henry James, Marcel Proust and Robert Musil which was published in 1974 as Proust, Musil and Henry James: Femininity and the Creative Imagination.^[2]

[edit] Academic work

After a year working as a writer in a Manhattan social research firm Appignanesi returned to Britain to work as a European Studies lecturer at the University of Essex.^[2] Appignanesi also lectured at New England College, Sussex and in 1976 helped found the Writers and Readers writers collective.^[1] In 1975 she published The Cabaret, a history of European-style cabaret.^[1]

[edit] ICA and full-time writing

In 1980 she left academia to become Director of Talks and Seminars at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, where she stayed for ten years and helped the ICA talks programme gain a reputation as "an intellectual hothouse".^[1] While at the ICA she edited the Documents series, which included the books Postmodernism and Ideas of France.^[1] She became Deputy Director of the ICA in 1986 and created the ICA-Television branch, which produced England's Henry Moore in 1988.^[4] She left the ICA in 1990 to write full-time, and received publishing deals for Memory and Desire and Freud's Women (written with John Forrester) published in 1991 and 1992 respectively.^[2] As well as these she has written nine other fiction and two non-fiction books, including the highly acclaimed Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors in 2008.^[5][6][7]

As well as her writing Appignanesi has also co-written a film on Salman Rushdie for French television,^[8] presented a series of radio programmes on Sigmund Freud for BBC Radio 4,^[9] and written for the New Writing Partnership.^[10] She is also a fellow of the Brain and Behavior Laboratory at the Open University,^[2] a council-member of the ICA and a trustee of the Freud Museum.^[11] She has also written for The Guardian,^[11] The Observer, and The Daily Telegraph.^[2][8] In 2004 she became the Deputy President of English PEN and in 2008 the President. As part of her work with English PEN she edited Free Expression is No Offence, a collection of writings that formed part of English PEN's protest against the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006 and helped force the British Government to amend the Act and add a clause protecting freedom of expression.^[11]

Appignanesi has been nominated for the Charles Taylor Prize,^[12] short-listed for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and won the Canadian Holocaust Fiction Award.^[12] In 2004 she was made a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.^[12] Her general writings mirror those of Elizabeth Adler, Helen Dunmore, Lesley Glaister and Sally Beauman, but her psychological writings compare to that of Jane Adams, Claire Francis and Nicci French.

[edit] Personal life

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Lisa Appignanesi first married Richard Appignanesi, another writer, with whom she had one son, the film director Josh Appignanesi. The couple later divorced. Her later partner is John Forrester. Their child, Lisa Appignanesi's second, is Katrina Forrester, a graduate student.

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• The Language of Trust (1973)
• Proust, Musil and Henry James: Femininity and the Creative Imagination (1974)
• The Cabaret (1975)
• Not to be Trusted (1981)
• One Man Woman (1982)
• Hard to Handle (1983)
• New Discovery (1984)
• The Rushdie File (1984)
• Memory and Desire (1991)
• Freud's Women (1992) (co-author: John Forrester)
• Dreams of Innocence (1994)
• A Good Woman (1996)
• The Things We Do for Love (1997)
• Losing the Dead: A Family Memoir (1999)
• The Dead of Winter (1999)
• Sanctuary (2000)
• The Cabaret (2004)
• Paris Requiem (2004)
• The Memory Man (2004)
• Free Expression is No Offence (2005)
• Unholy Loves (2005)
• Simone De Beauvoir (Life & Times S.) (2005)
• Mad, Bad and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors (2008)

[edit] External links

• Lisa Appignanesi Official Website