A FORMER Lancaster University student has a double reason to celebrate as she makes her way in the world of literature.

Sarah Waters, who studied for an MA in Creative Writing at Bailrigg, was on the Booker Prize shortlist for her third novel, Fingersmith, while her first work, Tipping the Velvet, has been adapted into a controversial BBC drama.

The 36-year-old, who now lives in Brixton, South London, was also nominated for the Orange prize for Fingersmith.

After leaving Lancaster, Sarah studied for a PhD on 'the idea of history in lesbian and gay writing' at St Mary' s, London before moving to work for the Open University.

She left two years ago to pursue a full-time writing career.

Tipping the Velvet, adapted into a three-part series by noted screenwriter, Andrew Davies, started on BBC2 last week, and has been lauded by critics.

It follows the story of a young Whitstable oyster girl, Nan Astley (Rachael Stirling), who starts a lesbian relationship with male impersonator, Kitty Butler (Keeley Hawes), and moves on to London.

However, Kitty ultimately chooses a safe life and marries her manager, leaving Nan to be drawn into the seedy underworld of Victorian London Mr Davies said: "Sarah Waters writes from a deep understanding, not only of the great Victorian writers but also the underground literature of the time - the pornographic fiction and the private memoirs of men and women who revealed the truth about what men and women thought and did in the later years of the 19th century.

" She also writes with an extraordinary, gutsy zest for life in all its often comic complexity, especially the sexual life.

The effect of this is sometimes shocking, but always illuminating and life-enhancing."

Fingersmith explores some of the same themes, but its twisting plot follows two orphans in the 1860s.