Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen

Fay Weldon is a novelist, screenwriter and cultural journalist. Her novels include ‘The Life and Loves of a She-Devil’, ‘Puffball’, ‘Big Women’ and ‘Rhode Island Blues’. She has also published her autobiography ‘Auto da Fay’. Her most recent novel was the critically acclaimed ‘She May Not Leave’. She lives in Dorset. Fay Weldon was brought up in New Zealand. She read Economics and Psychology at the University of St Andrews, and worked briefly for the Foreign Office in London. She later began to write full-time. She received an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews in 1990. In 2001 she was awarded a CBE. She lives in Dorset with her husband, the poet Nick Fox.

Lesley was raised in England, and graduated with a Bachelor of Education Honors degree from Cambridge University. She moved to the United States in 1978, and holds a Master of Education degree from South Dakota State University. She taught science and was a school principal in middle schools in Alaska for 27 years. After moving from Alaska, she set sail on a new challenge and became a licensed real estate appraiser in California, where she currently runs her own company appraising commercial real estate. Lesley has always been an avid reader, and has entertained the family with her command of numerous English dialect accents! She studied French for 5 years and also won a Fulbright Memorial Fund Scholarship to Japan in 2004. Raising seven children in a blended family has provided plenty of opportunities to read aloud! She now practices on the one human (doting husband) and four remaining canine family members, who all approve with smiles and wagging tails!