Professor Dame Marina Warner

Professor of English and Creative Writing, Birkbeck College, University of London
DBE, CBE, FBA, FRSL
Distinguished Fellow since 2019

My critical and historical books and essays explore different figures in myth and fairy tale,  such as  the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc; more  recently I have concentrated on fairy tales, including the Arabian Nights. I  also write novels and short stories,  often drawing on mythic or other imaginary predecessors to translate them into contemporary significance – to re-vision them. Stories come from the past but speak to the present, and I have found that  I need to write stories as well as deconstruct them and place them in historical contexts, because I myself love reading works of imagination, and I would like to join the conversation with admired predecessors, who range from Apuleius  to Virginia Woolf,  Italo Calvino, and Angela Carter.