Helen Garner

Helen Garner (née Ford; born 7 November 1942) is an Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. Garner's first novel, Monkey Grip, published in 1977, immediately established her as an original voice on the Australian literary scene—it is now widely considered a classic. She has a reputation for incorporating and adapting her personal experiences in her fiction, something that has brought her widespread attention, particularly with her novels Monkey Grip and The Spare Room (2008). Throughout her career, Garner has written both fiction and non-fiction, and her works have covered a broad range of themes and subject matter. Some of her books have attracted controversy, such as her book The First Stone: Some Questions About Sex and Power (1995) about a sexual-harassment scandal in a university college. She has also written for film and theatre. Adaptations of two of her works have appeared as feature films: her debut novel, Monkey Grip, and her true-crime book Joe Cinque's Consolation (2004)—the former released in 1982 and the latter in 2016. This House of Grief (2014) is another true-crime book. She has consistently won awards for her work, including the Walkley Award for a 1993 Time magazine report. In 2025 she won the Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction, for How to End a Story: Collected Diaries.