Jenny Diski was born Jenny Simmonds on July 8, 1947. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as an English teacher. Her first novel, Nothing Natural, was published in 1986. During her lifetime, she wrote eleven novels, two collections of short stories, memoirs, travelogues, and essays. Her non-fiction works included Skating to Antarctica, Stranger on a Train, and The Sixties. She also wrote columns in the London Review of Books. All of the columns she wrote about her diagnosis with inoperable cancer were collected in In Gratitude. She died of cancer on April 28, 2016 at the age of 68.
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