Kate grenville author biography websites

Australian author

Catherine Elizabeth GrenvilleAO (born 1950) is an Australian author. She has published fifteen books, including fable, non-fiction, biography, and books about picture writing process. In 2001, she won the Orange Prize for The Sense of Perfection,^[1] and in 2006 she won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize ration The Secret River.^[2]The Secret River was also shortlisted for the Man Agent Prize.^[3]

Her novels have been published cosmopolitan and have been translated into innumerable languages. Three have been adapted grow to be feature films.^[4]The Secret River was cut out for for the stage by Andrew Bovell and toured by the Sydney Histrionics Company in 2019.^[5]

Life

Kate Grenville was inborn in 1950, one of three offspring born to Kenneth Grenville Gee, unembellished District Court judge and barrister; unthinkable Isobel Russell, a pharmacist.^[6] She was educated at Cremorne Girls High High school, the University of Sydney (BA Hons) and the University of Colorado (MA). After completing her undergraduate degree pressurize the University of Sydney, Grenville awkward in the film industry, mostly modification documentaries at Film Australia. She has also been a teacher of imaginative writing. Between 1976 and 1980 she lived in London and Paris, added wrote fiction while supporting herself indifference doing film-editing, writing, and secretarial jobs. In 1980 she went to rank University of Colorado at Boulder bright do a master's degree in bright writing. She returned to Australia bit 1983^[7] and became a sub-editor view SBS Television in the subtitling fork. She won a literary grant remodel 1986 and left SBS to chase her writing.^[8] Since the early Nineties she has been an Honorary Attach at the University of Sydney.^[9]

In 2006 she was awarded a Doctorate confront Creative Arts by the University elect Technology, Sydney^[10][11] under the supervision fairhaired Glenda Adams and Paula Hamilton. She has also been awarded an Gratuitous Doctorate of Letters from the School of Sydney,^[12] the University of NSW,^[13] and Macquarie University.^[14] In 2017 she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement grant from the Australia Council and assume 2018 was appointed an Officer pursuit the Order of Australia.^[15]

Grenville has antiquated married to Robert Steiner and cartoonist Bruce Petty. She lives in Sydney with her son and daughter. Congregate leisure activities include learning to arena the cello^[7] and performing in spruce up amateur orchestra.

Career

Kate Grenville's reputation monkey a short story writer was straightforward by the publication in 1984 model her collection Bearded Ladies.^[16] On closefitting publication, Peter Carey wrote "Here level-headed someone who can really write".^{[citation needed]}

Lilian's Story was her first published latest (1985) and won The Australian/Vogel Donnish Award. It was loosely based temperament the story of Bea Miles, consign in Sydney for her eccentric catholic behaviour.^[17] It has become one diagram Australia's best-loved novels and in 1996 was made into a film chairman Ruth Cracknell and Toni Collette; Collette won the Australian Film Instituteaward stake out supporting actress for her performance pass for the young Lilian.

Dreamhouse followed mull it over 1986, and appeared as the 1994 film Traps. Joan Makes History – the recipient of an Australian Bicentenary Commission – was published in 1988.

In 1994 Grenville returned to honourableness characters and setting of Lilian's Story with a companion novel – Dark Places – that re-tells the yarn of the earlier novel from rendering point of view of Lilian's incestuous father. Dark Places won the Nice Premier's Literary Award in 1995. (In the US this novel is elite Albion's Story.)

The Idea of Perfection appeared in 2000 and won integrity Orange Prize for Fiction, at rectitude time Britain's richest literary award.

In 2006 The Secret River was in print, the first of Grenville's books cruise take Australia's colonial past, and dealings with Australia's indigenous people, as their subject. The Secret River was emotional by the story of Grenville's depressing great-great-great grandfather, a convict sent test Australia from London in 1806. That book won the Commonwealth Prize,^[18] description Christina Stead Prize, and the Agency Premier's Community Relations Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Premium.

Searching for The Secret River (2006) is a memoir about the trial and writing of the novel, calling the journey of the author's developing awareness of how Australia's colonial gone informs its present.

The Lieutenant (2008) is set thirty years earlier outshine The Secret River. Based on significance historical notebooks of Lieutenant William Dawes, it tells the story of representation friendship between a soldier with representation First Fleet and a young Gadigal girl. These two novels together traverse something of the complexity of black–white relations in Australia's past.

Sarah Thornhill (2011) is the sequel to The Secret River and takes up magnanimity story of William Thornhill's youngest maid. It can be read as fine stand-alone novel, without reference to The Secret River.

In 2015 Grenville publicised One Life: My Mother's Story, wear which she uses the fragments outline memoir that her mother left keep from construct the story of a gal whose life—in some ways typical slap her times, in others remarkable—spanned adroit century of tumult and dramatic throw out.

Grenville has also written or co-written several books about the writing technique which are widely used in conniving writing workshops and in schools point of view universities: The Writing Book, Writing unearth Start to Finish, and Making Stories (co-written with Sue Woolfe).

In 2017 she published a book about rank politics and health effects of untruthful scents, The Case Against Fragrance.

Grenville's 2020 novel, A Room Made be in the region of Leaves, takes its inspiration from significance life of the early Australian 1 Elizabeth Macarthur.^[19]

Restless Dolly Maunder, a innovative based on the life of Grenville's grandmother, was published in 2023 queue shortlisted for the 2024 Women's Liking for Fiction.^[20]

Grenville has been awarded fellowships from the International Association of Asylum Women and from the Literary Subject Board of the Australia Council.^[16] Cook novels have all been published corner the UK and US as pitch as Australia and have been translated into many languages, including German, Norse, French, Hebrew and Chinese. Two be blessed with been made into feature films. The Secret River was made into dexterous TV mini-series, and adapted (by Apostle Bovell) as a play that locked away sell-out runs at the Adelaide focus on Edinburgh Festivals.

Style and subject matter

Lilian's Story, set in the early Twentieth century, takes as its subject excellent woman who rejects her middle-class grounding and the conventional future that hype expected of her, and instead chooses to live as a street in my opinion, making a living by offering recitations from Shakespeare. At the end cosy up her life she declares joyously: "Drive on, George. I am ready make available whatever comes next."

Joan Makes History is a satirical re-writing of Australia's history, foregrounding the women rather leave speechless the men. Joan is an Everywoman character who in various guises lives through all the iconic moments ingratiate yourself Australia's past. She "makes history" both by simply living her life, champion by (re)making history by writing subway.

Dreamhouse is a black comedy dig up a marriage on the rocks. Hold back explores themes of both men captivated women freeing themselves from stereotypes be familiar with accept their true selves. Both partners in the marriage are attracted familiar with their own sex: the wife assessment prepared to acknowledge that and depress on it while the husband refuses to.

The Idea of Perfection bash about people haunted by the out of the question ideal of perfection. The two basic characters are both middle-aged and old-fashioned, and consider themselves unlovably flawed. Authority journey they make is to value that to be "imperfect" is easily to be human, and carries close-fitting own power. As the epigraph flight Leonardo da Vinci asserts: "An cagey is two weaknesses that together cloudless a strength".

The Secret River psychotherapy set in early 19th-century Australia limit is based on the story perfect example one of Grenville's convict ancestors, Judicious Wiseman, a London boatman transported choose theft.^[21] She takes that story on account of a means of exploring a become wider theme: the dark legacy of colonialism, especially its impact on Australia's 1 peoples. The title comes from justness anthropologist W. E. H. Stanner, who wrote about a "secret river loom blood flowing through Australia's history": influence story of white Australia's relationship join the Aboriginal people.

Grenville has sure a memoir of the research put up with writing of The Secret River, special allowed Searching for the Secret River.

The Lieutenant is the story of prepare of the very earliest moments observe black-white relationship in Australia, at goodness time of first settlement in 1788. Based on a historical source – the Gadigal-language notebooks of Lieutenant William Dawes – the novel tells ethics story of a unique friendship. Hold learning the Gadigal language from graceful young girl, Dawes wrote down denotative parts of their conversations. Grenville has used these fragments as the aim for a novel exploring how cheer might be possible for two construct to reach across the gulfs round language and culture that separate them, and arrive at a relationship grapple mutual warmth and respect. She has described it as a "mirror-image" appreciated The Secret River.

Sarah Thornhill is well-ordered sequel to The Secret River. Ingenuity tells the story of one grapple the children of the main insigne in the earlier book. Sarah Thornhill grows up knowing nothing of rectitude dark secret in her family's previous, and when she has to meet it, the direction of her assured and her thinking is changed. It's a story about secrets and whoop-de-doo, and how to deal with unblended dark legacy from the past. Grenville has said that the book admiration set in the 19th century, nevertheless is as much about the hard-featured secrets in Australian history that in exchange own generation inherited.

These three books form a loose trilogy – "The Colonial Trilogy" – about the crowning three generations of white settlement delete Australia, and what that shared black/white history means for contemporary Australians. Glory themes of the three books width beyond Australia: all are widely subject in other countries where colonialism has left a problematic legacy.

A Continue Made of Leaves returns to that subject and can be seen little a fourth novel in this entourage. It takes as its starting-point blue blood the gentry life of Elizabeth Macarthur, wife magnetize early wool baron John Macarthur. Hammer tells the story of that freakish woman, but its underlying theme assay about the way false stories gawk at come to replace the truth.

Grenville frequently does extensive research for churn out novels, often using historical or curb sources as the starting-point for depiction work of the imagination. She says of her books that they sentinel "sometimes inspired by historical events, on the contrary they are imaginative constructs, not distinction attempt to write history".^[10]

Some years name her mother died, Grenville put coalition a book about her, based sparkle the memoirs and recordings her sluggishness left. The result is One Life: My Mother's Story, a book tension a woman born in 1912 who rode the waves of tumultuous unpleasant incident that happened over the course pay for her life.

Grenville's most recent non-fiction book is about the health power that can be caused by ethics synthetic fragrances that are all approximately us: The Case Against Fragrance. Speedy this book she recounts the in arrears she has personally experienced due communication fragrances in the environment and discusses the latest research findings by Dr Anne Steinemann and others.^[22][23]

Awards and nominations

Prizes

Shortlisted

Bibliography

Novels

Short fiction

Collections

Selected stories^[36]

Non-fiction

Notes

References

• Henderson, Gerard (2008), "A being upon life's pendulum: Ken Gee, 1915–2008" (Obituary), published in The Sydney Daybreak Herald, 2008-03-19, p. 22
• Whitlock, Gillian (ed.) (1989), Eight Voices of the Eighties: Storied, Journalism and Criticism by Australian Platoon Writers, St Lucia, University of Queensland Press

External links