CHRISSIE GLAZEBROOKChrissie Glazebrook, who died on 7 December, 2007, came into literature late in life but her two acclaimed comic novels were praised for their accurate portrayal of life as a modern teenager.Rowena Vincent, heroine of the The Madolescents (2001) and Blue Spark Sisters (2003), was described in the Guardian as "perhaps the richest portrait so far of the teenage underclass" and Ms Glazebrook’s writing was noted for its sharp, sardonic and unsentimental tone.Christine Ann Wright was born on 19 March, 1945, and raised by adoptive parents Ernest and Mary Wright along with an adopted sister in the Black Country. At 17 she ran away from home and college to live in a Cornish commune but was retrieved by police and put to work in a factory.She married Terry Glazebrook in the late 1960s and they moved to Scarborough in Yorkshire where she worked first as a vegetarian restaurant manager and then a theatre administrator.She moved into journalism with a job at BBC Radio York and began writing for magazines such as girls weekly Jackie. By the 1980s she had published her first book, A Pocket Guide to Men (1986), and was working as a television presenter for Tyne Tees Television.In 1998 she completed a creative writing Masters at Northumbria University and won the Waterstone's Prize for Prose for her short stories. Though still unsure of her talents, she began her first novel.The Madolescents, in which Rowena works as an apprentice mortician with aspirations in the beauty world, is an irreverent black comedy which encompasses the many facets of modern teenage life, including alcoholism, therapy and acne. The book made it onto many end-of-year lists.The follow-up, Blue Spark Sisters, was not so well received and the author herself was far from satisfied with it. This was symptomatic of the depression she had suffered with for many years, depression she tempered with a gallows sense of humour.This was further demonstrated when, in January 2007, she gave up writing professionally and started a blog called Shuffling Off after being diagnosed with bowel and liver cancer. "Into every life a little merde must fly," she wrote in her first post.She had been a popular speaker on the literary talk circuit and was a prominent figure in the artistic community of the North East, serving as literature officer for Northern Arts and helping to found the proudWORDS gay and lesbian literature festival. She had also run writing workshops for the mentally ill and women in prison.She passed away at the age of 62 and was survived by her adoptive sister, having previously been divorced from her husband.Mark Robinson of Arts Council England said: "I had the pleasure of attempting to manage Chrissie when I first joined Northern Arts and she was a unique person: funny, sparky, outrageous and passionate, with a wit that respected few boundaries. I know from my own earlier experience how helpful and supportive she was to many, many writers and publishers. She will be missed hugely."
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