Kathryn Heyman is an Australian writer of novels and plays. She is the director of the Australian Writers Mentoring Program[1] and Fiction Program Director of Faber Writing Academy.[2]

Career

Born in New South Wales, Australia, she was brought up in Lake Macquarie with her four siblings.[3][4]

As a young adult Heyman spent many years in the United Kingdom, where she studied under the Caribbean poet E.A. Markham, and where she was first published.[5]

Heyman is the author of six novels: The Breaking (1997), Keep Your Hands on the Wheel (1999), The Accomplice (2003) Captain Starlight's Apprentice (2006) Floodline (2013) and Storm and Grace (2017)[6] She is also a playwright for theatre and radio and has held a number of creative writing fellowships in the UK and Australia. Her short stories have appeared in a number of collections and also on radio.

Heyman's first novel, The Breaking, was longlisted for the Orange Prize, and shortlisted for the Scottish Writer of the Year Award.[7] Her third, The Accomplice, won an Arts Council England Writer's Award and was shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier's Book Awards. The Accomplice is a fictional account of the wreck of the Dutch flagship the Batavia off the Australian coast in the 17th century. As a meditation on complicity with evil it has been compared with the work of Joseph Conrad and William Golding.[8]

Her fourth novel, Captain Starlight's Apprentice, features a woman bushranger, the birth (and near death) of the Australian film industry, and a British migrant to Australia who undergoes electroconvulsive therapy. In 2007 the novel was shortlisted for the Nita Kibble Literary Award.

Floodline, published 2013, is set during the aftermath of a great flood, and has been compared with the writing of Cormac McCarthy.[9] Heyman's writing has also been compared with that of Angela Carter,[10] David Malouf,[11] Peter Carey and Kate Grenville.[12]

Heyman's sixth novel Storm & Grace, a psychological thriller about freediving, deals with violence against women and was published by Allen & Unwin in February 2017.[13]

Heyman's work has appeared on BBC Radio 4, and a five-part dramatic adaptation of Captain Starlight's Apprentice was broadcast on Woman's Hour in April 2007.[14] In 2013 she delivered the NSW Premier's Literary Awards keynote address.[15]

Books

Plays

Works for BBC Radio

Awards

References

  1. ^ Author profile, Sydney Writers Festival 2017.
  2. ^ Faber Writing Academy, Writing a Novel, 2015.
  3. ^ Jodie Minus, "The Face: Kathryn Heyman", Weekend Australian, 17–18 May 2003, Review, p. R3.
  4. ^ Kelsey-Sugg, Anna & Zajac, Bec, "When Kathryn Heyman was traumatised and needing to escape, a fishing trawler offered her the hope of salvation", ABC Radio National, 25 May 2012.
  5. ^ Heyman, "There's no place like home", Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend, no. 15 July 2006, pp. 31–32.
  6. ^ Allen & Unwin, publisher
  7. ^ McMillan,Joyce, A familiar fear and loathing, [1]Glasgow Herald Friday 21 November 1997
  8. ^ Chevalier, Tracey, et al., "Summer Reading", The Guardian, 2003.
  9. ^ Clarke, Stella, "City's souls lost and saved in the flood", The Australian, 14 September 2013.
  10. ^ Sanders, Kate, The Times 27 May 2006.
  11. ^ Duncan, Shirley J. Paolini, "Outlaw odyssey.(Captain Starlight's Apprentice) (Book review)", Antipodes, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 89(2).
  12. ^ White, Judith, The Bulletin, 30 May 2006.
  13. ^ Louise Swinn, Sydney Morning Herald, 18 February 2017.
  14. ^ Captain Starlight's Apprentice, BBC – Woman's Hour Drama.
  15. ^ University of Newcastle
  16. ^ "2022 Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature shortlists announced". Books+Publishing. 19 January 2022. Retrieved 26 January 2022.
  17. ^ "Literature Board Assessment Meeting Report" (PDF). Australia Council. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 February 2014. Retrieved 28 February 2014.
  18. ^ "History of Shortlisted Authors" (PDF). Kibble Literary Awards. Retrieved 28 February 2014.
  19. ^ "Literary Cash Boost for Authors". BBC News. Retrieved 28 February 2014.
  20. ^ "2003 Shortlist". Western Australian Premier's Book Awards Archive. State Library of Western Australia.
  21. ^ "Record of Wingate Scholars 1988–2011" (PDF). Wingate Scholarships Anniversary Archive. Harold Hyam Wingate Foundation. Retrieved 28 February 2014.
  22. ^ "Kathryn Heyman". Royal Literary Fund Fellowship Scheme. Royal Literary Fund. Archived from the original on 8 March 2014. Retrieved 28 February 2014.
  23. ^ "Longlist 1998". Women's Prize for Fiction. Retrieved 28 February 2014.
  24. ^ "Mother & Child Reunion". The Scotsman. Retrieved 28 February 2014.
  25. ^ "Kathryn Heyman". Royal Literary Fund Fellowship Scheme. Royal Literary Fund. Archived from the original on 8 March 2014. Retrieved 28 February 2014.

External links

Authority control databases
Categories