Elected: 2018
Year of birth: 1948
Pauline Melville is a British Guyanese writer who has worked at the Royal Court Theatre, the National Theatre and in television, film and cabaret. Her first novel, The Ventriloquist’s Tale, won the Whitbread First Novel Award. Other literary awards include the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Macmillan Silver Pen Award, a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Guyana Prize for Literature. Salman Rushdie has described her as ‘one of the few genuinely original writers to emerge in recent years’.
Fellows are nominated by peers and elected by our Council of writers – our governing Board. Being elected a Fellow of the RSL is a lifetime honour. This role gives them the opportunity to support other writers, readers and the future of literature. The RSL connects writers in the Fellowship to one another, and to a wider readership.
