Park, Ruth (1923-2010), an Australian author, became noted for her fiction for children, young adults, and adults. Park won the Miles Franklin Award, Australia’s top fiction prize, for her adult novel Swords and Crowns and Rings in 1977. The story is set primarily in rural Australia from 1907 to 1932, and tells about the struggles of Jackie Hanna, a dwarf, as he seeks love and self-respect.
Park’s adult novel The Harp in the South (1948) first gained her recognition. It is a realistic story set in the slums of Sydney. Her other adult novels include Poor Man’s Orange (1949), The Witch’s Thorn (1951), A Power of Roses (1953), Pink Flannel (1955), One-a-Pecker, Two-a-Pecker (1957), The Good Looking Woman (1961), and Missus (1987). She began writing for young people with the novel The Hole in the Hill (1961). The most familiar of her children’s books are those in the “Muddle-Headed Wombat” series of animal stories, which originated in scripts for a children’s radio program from 1957 to 1971. Another well-known novel that Park wrote for teenagers, the fantasy Playing Beattie Bow (1980), was made into a motion picture in 1986.
Rosina Ruth Lucia Park was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on Aug. 24, 1923. She moved to Sydney, Australia, in 1942 and married the Australian writer D’Arcy Niland. They collaborated on the autobiography The Drums Go Bang! (1956). She wrote two other volumes of autobiography, A Fence Around the Cuckoo (1992) and Fishing in the Styx (1993). Park also wrote many scripts for motion pictures, radio, and television. She died on Dec. 14, 2010.
