A Conversation With Jeanette Winterson
From Now What? With Carole Zimmer by Carole Zimmer
February 17, 2026 · 32 min
About this episode
Jeanette Winterson discusses her life, relationships, and her new book inspired by ancient fairy tales.
Jeanette Winterson is a writer who grew up in a Pentecostal evangelical family in a little town in the north of England. She was adopted. Her parents were poor. There was no indoor bathroom. Winterson dreamed of escaping that life. When she was 16, she fell in love with a woman. Her parents were scandalized. Winterson left home, slept in her car and managed to get into Oxford. She's fascinated by the ancient fairy tales in The One Thousand and One Nights. Winterson uses these stories as a framework in her new book One Aladdin Two Lamps. We talk about good relationships, ghosts, elves and AI. "Now What?" is produced with the help of Steve Zimmer, Lucy Little and Jackie Schwartz. Audio production is by Nick Ciavatta.
People in this episode
Host: Carole Zimmer
Guest: Jeanette Winterson
Topics covered
- personal story
- relationships
- literature
- fairy tales
- identity
- AI
Keywords
- Jeanette Winterson
- One Aladdin Two Lamps
- The One Thousand and One Nights
- relationships
- fairy tales
- AI
- identity
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: One Aladdin Two Lamps, The One Thousand and One Nights
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