Things I Don't Want to Know

'Perhaps when Orwell described sheer egoism as a necessary quality for a writer, he was not thinking about the sheer egoism of a female writer. Even the most arrogant female writer has to work over time to build an ego that is robust enough to get her through January, never mind all the way to December.' Deborah Levy

Deborah Levy trained at Dartington College of Arts, leaving in 1981 to write a number of plays, highly acclaimed for their "intellectual rigour, poetic fantasy and visual imagination". She wrote and published her first novel Beautiful Mutants, when she was 27 years old. The experience of not having to give her words to a director, actors and designer to interpret was so exhilarating, she wrote a few more. Her recent novel, Swimming Home, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012. Levy has just published Black Vodka: Ten Stories with And Other Stories.