Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow; Anglia Staff Mentor


Office Hours: (By appointment only) Tuesday 9.00 - 10.00am and 3.00 - 4.00pm, some Mondays

Room: Hel 150

Email: salcline@aol.com

Telephone: 0845 196 2082
International: +44 1223 363271 ext 2082

Sally Cline is a groundbreaking biographer and short story writer. Her nine books include three award winning literary biographies: "Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John" (1997), "Zelda Fitzgerald: Her Voice in Paradise" (2002), and "Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett: Memories or Myths" (forthcoming 2009).

She is now researching the iconic writer Katherine Mansfield and the first American woman publisher Blanche Knopf for two proposed new biographies. For her biographies and non-fiction she has received awards and fellowships from the British Academy, the Society of Authors, the Arts Council, Princeton University and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas.

In 2004 she was the recipient of the Hawthornden Fellowship for Writing. That year she also won the Hosking Houses Trust Fellowship for a Woman Writer over forty. Her short fiction for both print and radio has been shortlisted for the Asham Short Story Award, won a Raconteur Fiction Prize, several Arts Council bursaries and the BBC Short Story Contest. She was a prize winner in the UK New London Radio Playwriting Contest and has scripted, co produced and presented three documentaries based on her own books for Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Born in London, she read English and Philosophy at Durham University, gained her Masters in Social Science and Women's Studies from Lancaster University, and in 2004 was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge for her internationally esteemed writing. In 2006 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

She has lived in Cambridge for thirty years, taught for many years at Cambridge University, and was Anglia Ruskin's first Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow, a position she held for three years (2000-2003). In the UK she has also taught at Lancaster University and Sussex University, and in Canada at Dalhousie University and Mount St Vincent University. She has been a Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow for five years (2003-2005, 2006-2009) as well as Writer in Residence at Anglia Ruskin, where she mentors the creative and academic writing of academic and administrative staff and postgraduates from most University faculties. She offers special professional appointments to postgraduates taking the MA in Creative Writing.

Between 2004 and 2006 Sally Cline was Director of The Writers' Pool, the RLF's innovative mentoring scheme, and for several years has been a judge and mentor on the Arts Council's Escalator programme which funds and encourages talented emerging writers. Currently she teaches Lifewriting for the Arvon Foundation, and radio writing and short fiction modules for Anglia Ruskin University. She is also a judge and mentor for the prestigious Gold Dust Mentoring Scheme.

Early in her life she was a Fleet St journalist, a TV critic, then an international stage director and concert manager. Her work with both experienced and new writers, and in particular with those without either a literary background or scholarly achievements, has enabled many to achieve literary success.

Go back to the index page