{"id":116372,"date":"2025-11-05T08:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T08:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/116372\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T08:05:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T08:05:08","slug":"australias-helen-garner-wins-baillie-gifford-nonfiction-prize-for-her-addictive-diaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/116372\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia’s Helen Garner wins Baillie Gifford nonfiction prize for her ‘addictive’ diaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON — Helen Garner, an acclaimed Australian writer whose celebrity fans include singer Dua Lipa, won the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize<\/a> for nonfiction on Tuesday for what judges called her addictive and candid diaries.<\/p>\n

Garner, 82, was named winner of the 50,000 pound ($65,000) prize at a ceremony in London for \u201cHow to End a Story.\u201d Journalist Robbie Millen, who chaired the prize jury, said Garner was the unanimous choice of the six judges.<\/p>\n

Millen said the judges were captivated by the sharp observation and \u201creckless candor\u201d of Garner\u2019s 800-page book, which covers her life and work between 1978 and 1998.<\/p>\n

He said it is \u201ca remarkable, addictive book. Garner takes the diary form, mixing the intimate, the intellectual, and the everyday, to new heights.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are places it\u2019s toe-curlingly embarrassing. She puts it all out there,\u201d Millen said, adding that Garner ranks alongside those of Virginia Woolf in the canon of great literary diarists.<\/p>\n

Garner, who has published novels, short stories, screenplays and true crime books, said she was \u201cstaggered\u201d to have won the prize for diaries she wrote entirely for herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never thought that I was writing for anyone but myself and that\u2019s what\u2019s good about them, I think \u2014 that I\u2019m free when I\u2019m writing,” she told The Associated Press from Melbourne, Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose are the hours of practice that in a sense turned me into a writer. Because I\u2019ve been keeping a diary since I was a girl \u2014 and I\u2019ve burnt most of it, of course. I burnt it up until about the late 1970s. But it\u2019s my 10,000 hours and it\u2019s my enormous daily practice. So you never expect that to be out in the public eye. But it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow to End a Story\u201d is a deeply intimate book that among other things recounts, with unsparing detail and flashes of humor, the breakdown of a marriage.<\/p>\n

Despite the risk involved in such public soul-baring, Garner says the reaction of readers has made the experience life-affirming.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I write about \u2014 my life and my experience and my, not to put too fine a point on it, soul \u2014 there are so many people who know what I mean and who\u2019ve been there. And that\u2019s been a great joy to me to discover that,\u201d she said. \u201cThe deeper I go, the more other people I find there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garner\u2019s book is the first set of diaries to win the prize, which was founded in 1999 and recognizes English-language books in current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.<\/p>\n

Garner\u2019s 1977 first novel \u201cMonkey Grip\u201d \u2013 the semi-autobiographical story of a single mother in bohemian inner-city Melbourne \u2013 is considered a modern Australian classic. Her work includes the novella \u201cThe Children\u2019s Bach,\u201d screenplays including \u201cThe Last Days of Chez Nous\u201d and true crime books including \u201cThis House of Grief,\u201d which Lipa<\/a> chose this year for her monthly book club.<\/p>\n

The singer said Garner\u2019s work was \u201ca thrilling discovery. She\u2019s one of the most fascinating writers I have come across in years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garner is co-author of \u201cThe Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial,\u201d a book about Erin Patterson<\/a>, the Australian woman who killed three of her estranged husband\u2019s relatives with a lunch containing death cap mushrooms. It is published in Australia and the U.K. this month.<\/p>\n

Garner is less well known outside her home country, with U.S. and U.K. publishers only recently publishing many of her books.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has taken us a long while to work out how good she is,\u201d Millen said. \u201cFinally her status is being recognized, and I hope this will cement it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garner is the second Australian in a row to win the Baillie Gifford prize. Last year\u2019s winner was Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan<\/a> for his genre-bending memoir \u201cQuestion 7.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON — Helen Garner, an acclaimed Australian writer whose celebrity fans include singer Dua Lipa, won the prestigious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116373,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[74819,127,5927,146,122,85,46,6569,126],"class_list":["post-116372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-74819","tag-article","tag-books-and-literature","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-nonfiction","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116372\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}