Her long partnership with Trish is ‘old news’ to those who know her, but announcing Love Frankie, her new gay love story, she has chosen to tell readers

Jacqueline Wilson has spoken publicly for the first time about her personal life, and the fact she has been living “very happily” with her partner Trish for the last 18 years.

The bestselling children’s novelist, who has often been asked why she hasn’t written more about gay characters, tackles the topic in her 111th book, Love Frankie, in which tomboy Frankie falls for Sally, the prettiest girl in her class. Wilson told Guardian Review in an interview published on Saturday that she had put her “heart and soul” into the story, and said she knew “perfectly well that it would shine a little light on my own private life”.

Jacqueline Wilson: 'I've never really been in any kind of closet' Read more

Although it is not news to those who know her, she has not previously spoken publicly about her her partner Trish, whom Wilson met at a party after her marriage broke down in her early 50s.

“I’ve never really been in any kind of closet. It would be such old news for anybody that has ever known anything much about me. Even the vaguest acquaintance knows perfectly well that we are a couple,” she said. The only person to be “appalled” at her relationship was her mother, she added. But: “that wasn’t too devastating for me because my mum cordially hated my ex-husband; she didn’t really approve of any of my friends.”

The former children’s laureate, who is 74, was speaking to the Guardian from her home in Sussex. The author of some of the UK’s best-loved children’s books, from Hetty Feather to Tracy Beaker, Wilson said that she hadn’t previously focused a novel on a gay character because she was telling stories about children with problems, and she didn’t see “any problem whatsoever with being gay”.

Love Frankie, which is due to be published in August, also features a sick mother, separation, bullying and sibling rivalry. Wilson says she wanted to write: “a truthful, honest book about a girl falling in love with another girl. It’s certainly not aimed at young gay teenagers, it’s aimed at all teenagers who have ever worried because they haven’t fallen in love, or they have fallen in love.”

Wilson added that she doesn’t see herself as a mentor for teens struggling to come to terms with their sexuality. “I don’t think that girls would ever want a grey-haired, wrinkly writer as a role model if they were wanting to feel good about maybe being gay,” she said. “I’m sure they could find much more glamorous examples.”

A novelist friend, she said, once told her: “I don’t think you are a lesbian, I think you are a Trishian.” And Wilson replied: “I think that really sums me up.”