Fay Weldon, 1931- , is a British author and playwright. She was born Franklin Birkinshaw to a literary family in Alvechurch, England, on September 22, 1931. After living the first fourteen years of her life in Auckland, New Zealand, where her father worked as a doctor, Weldon's parents divorced and she moved to England to live with her mother and her sister. After the birth of her first son, Nicholas, and a subsequent failed marriage to Ronald Bateman, Weldon started working in the advertising industry to support herself and her son. At the age of 29 she married Ronald Weldon, with whom she had three more sons, and later began a career of writing for radio and television. In 1967, Weldon published her first novel, The Fat Woman's Joke. Over the next thirty years, Fay Weldon built a very successful career, publishing over 20 novels, collections of short stories, television movies, newspaper and magazine articles, and became a well-known voice on BBC radio. She has achieved various honors, including the Giles Cooper Award for best radio play, 1978, for Polaris and the Booker McConnell Prize nomination, 1979, for her novel Praxis.