Garner, Helen (1942-…), an Australian writer, has won critical recognition for her finely crafted novels, short stories, and motion-picture and television scripts. Her work is strongly influenced by her own experiences of the feminist movement of the 1970’s.
Garner was born on Nov. 7, 1942, in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. She graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1965 and worked for five years as a teacher. During the 1970’s, she acted in fringe theater and lived in collective households, or communes. Her sexual relationships, her contact with drug addiction, and her experiences with bringing up children in communes provided the basis for her first novel, Monkey Grip (1977). In 1978, this book won first prize in Australia’s National Book Council Awards (now the Banjo Awards). In 1982, it was made into a motion picture.
Following a year spent in Paris, Garner published two novellas (short novels) in one volume, Honour and Other People’s Children (1980). The themes that link the two are power, honor, and morality within relationships. The Children’s Bach (1984) is a novel that draws a link between music and the good order of a moral life. Cosmo Cosmolino (1992) consists of a novella and two short stories that provide a part-realistic, part-surrealist and comical vision of life in a commune. Her short stories were collected in Postcards from Surfers (1985). She has also written screenplays, including the script for Two Friends (1987), an award-winning television film made by the New Zealand director Jane Campion. Garner’s nonfiction was published in The First Stone: Some Questions About Sex and Power (1995) and True Stories (1996).
