Sue Gee

Sue Gee's parents met and married in India in 1946 and returned to Britain in 1947, with the coming of independence to India. She and her brother David grew up on a Devon farm and in a Leicestershire village, before the family moved to Surrey in 1957. She lived for 27 years with the environmental journalist Marek Mayer: they married in 2003, two years before his death.[2] Their son is Jamie Mayer. Sue Gee lives in London and Herefordshire.

She was educated at the University of London, Goldsmiths College and at Middlesex University, where between 2000 and 2008 she was programme leader on the MA Creative Writing course and established The North London Literary Festival.[3] She currently teaches at the Faber Academy, and is a mentor on the Write to Life programme at Freedom from Torture.

Her first novel, Spring Will Be Ours, was inspired by Marek Mayer's Polish background. It delineates the period 1939–1981 – from the Invasion of Poland (1939) at the start of World War II to the period of Solidarity and martial law (1981–1983). Its title comes from graffiti scrawled on the walls of Warsaw in 1981: Winter is yours, but spring will be ours. Later novels are both historical and contemporary. The success of her novel The Hours of the Night in 1995 attracted criticism from Barbara Cartland and others because it included a love affair between a gay couple.[4]

She is also the author of many short stories, and of a Radio 4 drama, Ancient & Modern, broadcast in 2004 with Juliet Stevenson in the lead role.