in 2002 because she found "seeing patients" was incompatible with writing novels, although she still lectures on the connections between literature and psychology. Writing In 2000 her first novel, Miss Garnet's Angel, was published to word-of-mouth acclaim, and she subsequently became a full-time writer. She widely contributes to newspaper and magazines, and to the BBC. In 2002, she was a judge for the Booker Prize for Fiction. In 2011 she contributed a short story, "Why Willows Weep", to an anthology supporting The Woodland Trust. The anthology had helped the Trust plant approximately 50,000 trees. She has also published two volumes of short stories, 'Aphrodite's Hat' and 'The Boy Who Could See Death.' Recent novels include The Cleaner of Chartres (2012), which considers the plight of unmarried mothers whose children are taken from them; Cousins (2016), which explores the moral dilemmas of assisted suicide, a cause to which Vickers has put her name; The Librarian (2018), which includes biographical information in the author's notes; Grandmothers (2019), which is based on her work as a psychotherapist and which explores intergenerational relationships; and The Gardener, which was published in November 2021. In The Librarian, Vickers describes Sylvia Townsend Warner as one of her role models. Personal life She has two sons from her marriage with Martin Brown. In 2002, her brief second marriage to the Irish writer and broadcaster Frank Delaney ended, and was dissolved "just as her career as an author took off". She lives in Notting Hill. In April 2020 she wrote that she hoped to be infected by the COVID-19 virus 'in order to be granted the immunity to return to the world and lend a hand'. She said she had a much younger physiological age than her actual age of 70, with low cholesterol and good fitness. Fiction (part of the Canongate Myth Series) (reprinted from the collection Aphrodite's Hat) A projected non-fiction book about The Book of Common Prayer and entitled Sweet and Comfortable Words was never published. References External links Official website Darwin's Angel: An Angelic Response to the God Delusion by John Cornwell. Review by Salley Vickers Salley Vickers discusses Belief with Joan Bakewell on BBC Radio 3 Woman's Hour 9 July 2009 BBC Radio 4 1948 births Living people 21st-century English novelists Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge Novelists from Liverpool British psychotherapists Jungian psychologists English women novelists 20th-century English women writers 20th-century English writers