Ginny Dougary :: Award-winning journalist and writer

http://www.ginnydougary.co.uk/

Ginny Dougary is an award-winning journalist and writer. She is the author of The Executive Tart & Other Myths - an exploration of women in the media, and a contributor to several anthologies: Ok,You Mugs, writers on movie actors, edited by Luc Sante and Melissa Holbrook Pierson (pub. Pantheon in the USA; Granta in the UK) and Amazonians, new travel writing by women (Penguin) edited by Sara Wheeler and Dea Birkett.

She is a founding member of the national organisation of Women in Journalism, which was launched more than ten years ago, and of the Brighton City Singers choir which started in July 2003.

Ginny Dougary has written for most of the national newspapers in the United Kingdom and her articles are syndicated worldwide.

After leaving Bristol University in 1978, with an honours degree in English, she worked for The Sunday Telegraph, the Radio Times and Tatler under the editorship of Tina Brown.

In 1981, Ginny Dougary moved to New York and then to Sydney where she was Arts
Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and senior writer on the SMH colour supplement, Good Weekend, where she still a regular contributor.

Ginny Dougary has been contracted to The Times, where she writes major interviews for the magazine and T2 , since 1992. News-breaking interviews include Michael Portillo, the Duchess of York, Norman Lamont and Jeanette Winterson. Journalistic highlights (but not always enjoyable encounters): Madonna, Norman Mailer, Elizabeth Taylor, Donald Trump, Salman Rushdie, Bob Geldof.

In 1997 , Dougary went to Resolute Bay, the Innuit community in Canada’s Arctic Far North, to report on the first British women’s expedition to the North Pole. There she met the British explorer Pen Hadow; the two remained in touch and she returned to the Arctic regions to cover his historic expedition to the North Pole in 2003. The following year, Dougary camped in Antarctica and flew to the South Pole to write about Simon Murray (the oldest man to walk to the Pole) and Pen Hadow’s joint endeavour.

n 2005, she wrote the lyrics for a collection of songs about David Blunkett’s life and recent times. These were showcased at the Soho Theatre under the working title of David Blunkett The Musical; a collaboration with the composer MJ Paranzino and producer Martin Witts who was behind the award-winning one-man-play, Hurricane. The actors were Mark Perry, Robert Bathurst, Lynne Davies and Zigi Ellison. There was a positive response from the invited audience which included: Sir Terence Conran, John Sergeant, Ann Leslie, Suzanne Moore, Deborah Moggach, Julie Myerson, Theodore Zeldin and Alvin Stardust.

David Blunkett The Musical is still in development. As a result of this collaboration, Dougary and Paranzino were commissioned to write a 20-minute choral piece by Sir Terence Conran and Bluestorm to celebrate the restoration of Brighton’s celebrated Thirties modernist masterpiece, designed by Wells Coates. The piece Vive Moderne was performed on September in a concert by the Brighton City Singers, the Djembe Divas and twenty members of the Brighton and Hove City Brass ensemble.

Ginny Dougary is currently working on a number of exciting arts projects with Pen Hadow and MJ Paranzino planned for 2006.

• Added on: Dec 4th, 2005
• Country: United Kingdom
• Language: English

• Listed in: Entertainment Journalists Culture
• Tags: news Celebrities women Opinion writers politicians