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I WAS BORN IN SYDNEY, Australia, in 1950. I did a BA honours degree at Sydney University, majoring in English Literature, and then went to work in the film industry, mostly editing documentaries. I thought I wanted to write, but kept being discouraged by comparing myself with the great writers I'd studied.
In the late 1970s I went to the UK on a working holiday for six months, and ended up being away for seven years. I started to write while I was living in London and Paris, supporting myself by various film-editing, writing, and secretarial jobs. Something about living as a foreigner in other countries gave me the freedom to try my long-suppressed dream of writing.
While I was in Paris I met American writers who introduced me for the first time to contemporary American fiction, and in 1980 I went to the University of Colorado at Boulder to do a Masters degree in Creative Writing. While I was there I put together a collection of short stories ( later to become Bearded Ladies), and wrote a novel which later became Dreamhouse. As a Teaching Assistant at the university I also taught Composition and Creative Writing to undergraduates.
In 1983 I returned to Australia with an unfinished novel which became Lilian's Story. Bearded Ladies was published in 1984 and the next year Lilian's Story won the Vogel/Australian award for an unpublished book. Dreamhouse was published the following year. Joan Makes History was commissioned by the Australian Government as part of its Bicentennial activities and was published in 1988. As an extension of the teaching I was doing, I published The Writing Book in 1990, and collaborated with Sue Woolfe on Making Stories in 1993. A companion novel to Lilian's Story, about her father, had been brewing slowly for ten years and was published as Dark Places (Albion's Story in the USA) in 1995. My latest novel is The Idea of perfection (1999, Picador). Follow the links to read an extract, or go to Reading Resources for information that reading groups might find useful.
I teach, write reviews and do other paid work, but my writing has been made possible in great part because of the support of the Australian Government through its arts funding body, the Australia Council. I am extremely grateful for this support.
I live in Sydney with my husband and young son and daughter, and am engaged in the long but satisfying process of learning to play the cello.
-- Kate Grenville
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