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Natasha Walter (born 20 January 1967) is a Britishfeminist writer and human rights activist. She is the author of a novel,A Quiet Life (2016), three works of non-fiction:Before the Light Fades: A Family Story of Resistance (2023,Virago),Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism (2010, Virago), andThe New Feminism (1998, Virago). She is also the founder of the charity Women for Refugee Women.

Her father wasNicolas Walter, an anarchist andsecular humanist writer, while her mother Ruth Walter (née Oppenheim) was a teacher and (later) social worker.^[1][2] Her grandfather wasWilliam Grey Walter, aneuroscientist. Her grandparents on her mother's side were refugees from Nazi Germany.^[3]

Walter read English atSt John's College, Cambridge, graduating with adouble First, and then won aFrank Knox Fellowship toHarvard.^[4] Her first job was atVogue magazine, and she subsequently became Deputy Literary Editor ofThe Independent and then a columnist and feature writer forThe Guardian. She went on to write for many publications, and to appear regularly onBBC2'sNewsnight Review andRadio 4'sFront Row. In 1999 she was a judge on theBooker Prize and in 2013 she was a judge on the Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize). She continued to write forThe Guardian.

Walter was the founder in 2006 of the charityWomen for Refugee Women, where she was the director until 2021. The charity supports women who seekasylum to tell their stories and challenges the injustices they experience.^[1]

In 2008 Women for Refugee Women produced the playMotherland which Natasha Walter wrote based on the experiences of women and children inimmigration detention. It was directed byJuliet Stevenson and performed at theYoung Vic in 2008 byJuliet Stevenson,Harriet Walter and others. Women for Refugee Women subsequently worked in partnership with other organisations to campaign for the end to the detention of children for immigration purposes in the UK, a policy which the government announced it would end in 2010.

Women for Refugee Women publishes research on the experiences of women in the asylum process, campaigns for an end to the detention of refugee women, and supports refugee women throughout the UK.

Walter is the author ofThe New Feminism, published byVirago in 1998. Her bookLiving Dolls, also published by Virago, looks at the resurgence ofsexism in contemporary culture.^[4]

In March 2015, Natasha Walter was the Humanitas Visiting Professor of Women's Rights at Cambridge University.^[5]

Walter is also the author of a novel,A Quiet Life,^[6] which is based loosely on the life of Melinda Marling, the wife of Cambridge spyDonald Maclean.

Walter's memoir,Before the Light Fades, was published byVirago in 2023. It tells the story of her mother's death by suicide, and the legacy of the political activism of her mother in the 1960s and that of her grandfather in the 1930s.^[7]

In October 2019, Walter was arrested for blocking a road inExtinction Rebellion's 'October Rebellion' in London'sTrafalgar Square. She tweeted: "I was one of 100s arrested yesterday for drawing attention to the destruction of our beautiful planet." She has continued to be active with Extinction Rebellion and Writers Rebel, a group of writers involved with the climate movement.^[8]

Walter lives in London with her partner and their two children.

• The New Feminism (1998).ISBN 978-1-86049-636-3
• On the Move: feminism for a new generation (1999).ISBN 978-1-86049-818-3
• Living Dolls (2009).ISBN 978-1-84408-484-5
• A Quiet Life (2016).ISBN 978-0008113759
• Before the Light Fades: A Family Story of Resistance (2023).ISBN 978-0349017822

She was recognized as one of theBBC 100 Women of 2013.^[9]

Wikiquote has quotations related toNatasha Walter.

• Women for Refugee Women
• 2002/01/interview_with_natasha_walter An interview with Walter on the website The F-Word
• Natasha Walter,"Veiled hopes",The Guardian, 5 February 2005. A feature on the situation facing Saudi women
• AuthKey=6ba2fcf21ac8a0b0e4ddf01c86ed4e90&issue=503 "Veiled hopes" A feature fromProspect magazine on biology and the backlash

• 1967 births
• 21st-century British novelists
• 21st-century English women writers
• 21st-century English writers
• Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge
• British feminist writers
• English people of German-Jewish descent
• Harvard University alumni
• Living people
• People educated at North London Collegiate School

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• BLP articles lacking sources from February 2023
• All BLP articles lacking sources
• EngvarB from October 2017
• Use dmy dates from October 2017