True Stories

An extraordinary book of collected short non-fiction, spanning fifty years of work, by one of Australia’s great writers.Helen Garner visits the morgue, and goes cruising on a Russian ship. She sees women giving birth, and gets the sack for teaching her students about sex. She attends a school dance and a gun show.She writes about dreaming, about turning fifty, and the storm caused by The First Stone. Her story on the murder of the two-year-old Daniel Valerio wins her a Walkley Award.Garner looks at the world with a shrewd and sympathetic eye. Her non-fiction is always passionate and compelling.About the author Helen Garner's first novel, Monkey Grip, was published in 1977, an immediately established her as an original voice on the Australian literary scene. She is known for incorporating and adapting her personal experiences in her fiction, something that has brought her both praise and criticism, particularly with her novels, Monkey Grip and The Spare Room. Throughout her career, Garner has written both fiction and non-fiction. She attracted controversy with her book The First Stone about a sexual harassment scandal in a university college. She has also written for film and theatre, and has consistently won awards for her work.In subsequent books, she has continued to adapt her personal experiences. Her later novels include The Children's Bach and Cosmo Cosmolino. In 2008 she returned to fiction writing with the publication of The Spare Room, a fictional treatment of caring for a dying cancer patient, based on the illness and death of Garner's friend Jenua Osborne. She has also published several short story collections: Honour and Other People's Children: two stories, Postcards from Surferers and My Hard Heart: Selected Fictions.