Leonora Carrington is a British born Surrealist painter and writer now living in Mexico city who has been described, alongside people such as Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro, as one of the leading lights of the Surrealist movement. Born in Lancashire in 1917 to a strict Catholic family she first came into contact with surrealism through her lover, Surrealist painter Max Ernst, before moving to Mexico in 1942. The Hearing Trumpet, her most famous piece of writing, was first published in France in 1974. Ali Smith was born in Inverness in 1962 and now lives in Cambridge. Her first book, Free Love, won the Saltire First Book Award. Her most recent novel, Hotel World, was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize in 2001 and won the Encore Award and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award in 2002.
This book is so inspiring...I love its freedom, its humour and how it invents its own laws. What specifically do I take from her? Her wig -- Bjoerk