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Helen Garner was born in 1942 in Geelong and educated at the University of Melbourne. She worked as a high school teacher until her first novel Monkey Grip was published in 1977. It was an instant success, winning a National Book Council award in 1978 and becoming a film in 1982. Since then she has written full-time, publishing novels, short stories, essays, journalism and long-form non-fiction. In 2006, Garner was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Literature, in 2016 the international Windham-Campbell Prize for Nonfiction, in 2019 the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature and in 2020 the Lloyd O’Neil Award for Services to the Australian Book Industry at the Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA). Most recently, Garner was awarded the 2023 ASA Medal by the Australian Society of Authors for her outstanding contribution to Australian culture. Helen Garner was born in 1942 in Geelong and educated at the University of Melbourne. She worked as a high school teacher until her first novel Monkey Grip was published in 1977. It was an instant success, winning a National Book Council award in 1978 and becoming a film in 1982. Since then she has written full-time, publishing novels, short stories, essays, journalism and long-form non-fiction. In 2006 she received the inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature and in 2016 the international Windham-Campbell Prize for her non-fiction work.
'Garner is scrupulous, painstaking, and detailed, with sharp eyes and ears. She is everywhere at once, watching and listening, a recording angel at life's secular apocalypses ... her unillusioned eye makes her clarity compulsive.' -- The New Yorker 'On the page, Garner is uncommonly fierce, though this usually has the effect on me of making her seem all the more likeable. I relish her fractious, contrarian streak - she wears it as a chef would a bloody apron - even as I worry about what it would be like to have to face it down.' -- Guardian
