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Lorraine Rogerson

Lorraine Rogerson

Lorraine Rogerson lives and writes in Broadstairs on the Isle of Thanet, on the North Kent coast.

Lorraine has written all her life. After she retired, she moved from official documents to creative writing, taking courses at Arvon and online, and doing an MA in Creative Writing at the University of Kent. She is writing a novel set in London in 1921 about what happens when two very different women discover they are married to the same man. An early extract was published in 2019 in Unveiled an anthology from the Unthank School of Writing.

 

Q: If you could travel back in time, which of the great writers would you like to meet and why?

A: Jane Austen, though I know she would be observing me closely and spotting all my vanities and inconsistencies. I love to think of her reading aloud to her sister and them both collapsing in laughter.

 

Q: What is the first book you remember reading or having read to you as a child?

A: Reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when I was around seven was when I first realised that books could transport you to another world, one you didn’t want to leave.

 

Q: Is there a book that you keep going back to, and if so, how many times have you read it?

A: I reread all the time. After the first headlong rush, swallowing a story whole, I like to go back and see how it worked, all the foreshadowing and every detail. And there is something anchoring about a book that you know you can enjoy again and again. Favourite authors to return to (and this is not exhaustive) include Austen, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Sybille Bedford. Dorothy Baker’s Cassandra at the Wedding, Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black. Anne Tyler, Ann Patchett, Alice Munro.  More recently, Sarah Hall, Jill Dawson, Tracey Chevalier. And Dickens, in the winter.

 

Q: If you could teleport yourself anywhere, real or fictional, where would it be and why?

A: Paris in the 1930s, with a camera: for the art, the writing, the wild experimentation, the unease and gathering clouds. This is where I want to write about for my next novel.