-
Get a Free Issue
of our Ezine!
Author Biography | Interview | Books by this Author | Read-Alikes
Helen Garner was born in Geelong, Australia, in 1942. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Melbourne, after which she became a high school teacher.
After leaving teaching in 1972, she turned to writing. Her award-winning books include novels, stories, screenplays, and works of nonfiction, including Monkey Grip, The First Stone, and Joe Cinque’s Consolation, and in 2008 The Spare Room - her first work of fiction in fifteen years. Her fiction has won numerous awards. She is also one of Australia's most respected non-fiction writers, and received a Walkley Award for journalism in 1993.
Helen has been married three times, and has a child from her first marriage. She currently lives in Australia.
This bio was last updated on 06/13/2017. In a perfect world, we would like to keep all of BookBrowse's biographies up to date, but with many thousands of lives to keep track of it's simply impossible to do. So, if the date of this bio is not recent, you may wish to do an internet search for a more current source, such as the author's website or social media presence. If you are the author or publisher and would like us to update this biography, send the complete text and we will replace the old with the new.
The Spare Room is your first novel for 15 years. Why did you decide to write it now and why this subject?
I had been publishing fiction, and making a living between books by writing feature journalism, since 1977, and thought of myself as both a novelist and a journalist. In the early 1990s I published a book called The First Stone, about a Melbourne University sexual harassment case; it took issue with a certain kind of victim feminism of the time, and to my great surprise (and a lot of people’s severe annoyance) it stayed on the best-seller list for months. Then I published Joe Cinque’s Consolation, an account of two Canberra murder trials, which was also well received. By then I thought I’d found my metier, and wondered if I would ever get back across the border into fiction. But then a friend I loved died of cancer. I needed to write about it. I didn’t want to write memoir or non-fiction: I wanted to go back to the freedom of fiction, where you can claim ownership of the material, and handle it in any way that enables you to create a larger, deeper truth.
The narrator, like you, is named Helen. Why did you call her that?
I called her Helen because, although the book is a novel (see above), I didn&#...
Emily Chenoweth is a former fiction editor of Publishers Weekly. Her work has appeared in Tin House, Bookforum, and People, among other publications. She lives in Portland, Oregon. (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Spare Room
Try:
Hello Goodbye
by Emily Chenoweth
Nancy Hassett Dahm is a registered nurse who specializes in cancer care. Her experience in caring for over 400 cancer patients, since 1991, is the basis of knowledge for this book. Over the years, she has developed ... (more)
If you enjoyed:
The Spare Room
Try:
Mind, Body and Soul
by Nancy H. Dahm
We recommend 13 similar authors
Pony Confidential
by Christina Lynch
In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.
.png)
Beware the man of one book
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
