Lisa Appignanesi

Lisa Appignanesi OBE is an award-winning writer, novelist, cultural commentator and Chair of the Royal Society of Literature.

Her new book is Everyday Madness: On Grief, Anger, Loss and Love. Her other prize-winning books include Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness,  All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion ,  Mad Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800; Freud’s Women (with John Forrester); a biographical portrait of Simone de Beauvoir and The Cabaret. She is also the author of an acclaimed family memoir, Losing the Dead, and nine novels, including The Memory Man and Paris Requiem.

She was for many years Chair of the Freud Museum London and President of English PEN. A former Deputy Director of London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, she was the Chair of the 2018 Man Booker International Prize. She is a Visiting Professor in Literature and Medical Humanities at King’s College London and was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of her contribution to literature. She was awarded the OBE for services to literature in 2013.  

She has contributed to many radio and television programmes, and has written for The Guardian, The Observer, The Telegraph and now the New York Review of Books. 

She was born in Poland, brought up in Paris and Montreal, came to the UK as a graduate student and lives in London.  She has two children, the filmmaker Josh Appignanesi, and the political philosopher and historian, Katrina Forrester.