Winterson joins Substack as writer in residence

Jeanette Winterson has joined the online platform Substack and been named its new writer in residence for November.

The author will write four ghost stories, one per week, as well as a memoir essay explaining the real life inspiration behind them. These newsletters will be free to receive for the entire month. She also plans to publish the four Substack stories, with nine others, as a book titled The Night-Side of the River at some point in the future.

Winterson is the latest in a line of high-profile authors to join the platform, with Salman Rushdie and Chuck Palahniuk both signing up this year.

Winterson wrote on Substack: "When I talked with Substack about being their writer in residence we all got excited about a new project I am making called: The Night-Side of the River. It’s a series of ghost stories – 13 of course – built around different themes; Clothes: Rooms. Objects. Places."

She added: "I wanted to lighten the load on my brain and have some dark-nights fun and shivers. For me, fiction is practical. It’s making something out of nothing. So, I shall be entertaining myself over these next few weeks, and hopefully giving you a few good stories to read with a glass of wine – or to read out loud to your friends. Or read out loud as a group. Ever tried that? It’s like being in a small choir or a band. The rhythm, tone, beat, occupy the space differently."

She said the stories are set alongside her own encounters with the supernatural: "Things I can’t explain. Things I am not sure I believe could happen but that seem to have happened. As a fiction writer the divide between imagination and reality doesn’t always seem so strong. That divide is hazy enough when we are dreaming, or, on the cusps of sleeping and waking."

In an interview with the New Statesman Winterson, who is published in the UK by Vintage, said she remained open-minded about new platforms such as Substack. She told the magazine: "I’m aware that there are lots of intelligent, curious people out there who don’t buy books in the way that I do, and who are used to getting all their content in short bites from their screen. But they’re informed. They aren’t people who are antagonistic to books or the life of the mind. They’re people who are doing it differently.”

She also insisted that publishing her stories on Substack first will not affect the success of her later book because "people who love buying books love buying books". Winterson will retain the copyright to the stories and may revise some of them before they are printed. She told the New Statesman: “Writers often don’t go back in to visit their work, whereas musicians, painters, theatre-makers all do! For my tribe, this could be a liberating experience.”