Escalator Literature winner 2009: Deborah Arnander

Biography:

Deborah was born in Northumberland and spent her childhood in Australia and Thailand. After qualifying for a Doctorate in French literature she went on to live in Paris, San Francisco and Seville, and has worked as a translator, researcher, speechwriter, house doctor, market trader, bingo-hall caller and bartender. She has just completed the Postgraduate Certificate in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Her poetry has been published on Ink, Sweat and Tears, and in the anthologies Not Expecting Fish, (Gatehouse Press), and Voicing Visions, (Norwich Twenty Group Spring Exhibition 2009). She is currently working on her first novel, set in Oxford and Brighton in 1984.

‘Ivan – I-van – was tiny, dapper, lonely, like an irksome Jiminy Cricket in his child-sized trilby hat. He would have closed in on Margaret, who would be squashed in her retreat against the window-glass. Sitting next to her yesterday, Mrs Day had felt the nuzzle of her overflowing flesh. It was quite unlike sitting next to Corinne, who was as sharp-edged as an oyster in the tide.’