Who the F Is … Author Sarah Waters?

Who she is: The Welsh-born, London-based Waters, an out lesbian, is a highly acclaimed novelist.

What she’s accomplished: If you want something scary to read Halloween night, you can’t go wrong with The Little Stranger, a terrific tale of mysterious and deadly events at a decaying English manor house shortly after World War II. Something supernatural may be responsible — or perhaps there’s a human hand in the happenings at Hundreds Hall.

The Little Stranger, Waters’s most recent novel, has no overtly LGBT characters (although you could perceive some as closeted), but many of her works do. The Night Watch, from 2006, is a dramatic story of how the lives of several gay, lesbian, and straight Londoners intertwine during WWII and immediately after. One of the standouts is Kay, a lesbian who’s a particularly heroic ambulance driver. And if you haven’t read Fingersmith, Affinity, or Tipping the Velvet — three novels that Waters herself calls “lesbo Victorian romps” — it’s time to get started. These three, along with The Night Watch, have been filmed for British television, with some shown stateside and all available on DVD.

And there’s good news for longtime Waters fans or those just getting started on her novels: She’s just announced that a new one will be coming out next year. Set in 1920s London, The Paying Guests will portray tensions that arise when an impoverished widow and her daughter take in lodgers. “It is vintage Sarah Waters in every way — beautifully described with excruciating tension, real tenderness, believable characters, and surprises; it is above all, a wonderful, compelling story,” says Lennie Goodings, an executive with the book’s publisher, Virago. It’s due out next fall.

Choice quote: “It got my mother using the word dildo, which I think has to be a bit of a victory.” — Waters to London’s Guardian on the TV version of Tipping the Velvet
 

For more information:SarahWaters.com