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. 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.
'Her prose is wiry, stark, precise, but to find her equal for the tone of generous humanity one has to call up writers like Isaac Babel and Anton Chekhov.' -- The Wall Street Journal