By the age of 16, Winterson had identified herself as a lesbian and left home. She soon after attended Accrington and Rossendale College, and supported herself at a variety of odd jobs while at St Catherine's College, Oxford studying English.
She won the 1987 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for The Passion, a novel set in Napoleonic Europe.
Winterston has authored over 20 books, including fiction, graphic novels, children's books, collections of short stories and a memoir, as well as adapting her work for stage and screen.
Her subsequent novels explore the boundaries of physicality and the imagination, gender polarities, and sexual identities, and have won several literary awards. Her stage adaptation of The PowerBook in 2002 opened at the Royal National Theatre, London. She also bought a derelict terraced house in Spitalfields, East London, which she refurbished into a flat as a pied-à-terre and a ground-floor shop, Verde's, to sell organic food.
In 2009, she donated her short story Dog Days to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project comprising four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the Fire collection. She also supported the relaunch of the Bush Theatre in London's Shepherd's Bush. She wrote and performed work for the Sixty Six project, based on a chapter of the King James Bible, along with other novelists and poets including Paul Muldoon, Carol Ann Duffy, Anne Michaels and Catherine Tate.Her 2012 novella, The Daylight Gate, based on the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials, was published on the 400th anniversary of the trials. The novella's main character, Alice Nutter, is based on the real-life woman of the same name.
In 2012, she succeeded Colm Tóibín as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester.
Winterson was made an officer of Order of the British Empire (OBE) at the 2006 New Year Honours "For services to literature".Winterston is a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Awards. Her book, Written on the Body, won in the category of Lesbian Fiction in 1994, and Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? won in the category of Lesbian Memoir or Biography in 2013. Additionally, her book Sexing the Cherry won the 1989 E. M. Forster Award.
Since coming out as a lesbian at the age of 16, Winterson has had a number of significant relationships. Her 1987 novel The Passion was inspired by her affair with Pat Kavanagh, her literary agent. From 1990 to 2002, Winterson was involved with BBC radio broadcaster and academic Peggy Reynolds. Since their relationship ended, Winterson has been involved with theatre director Deborah Warner and therapist Susie Orbach.
