Kate Grenville

The Secret River was inspired by the story of Grenville's own great-great-great grandfather, a convict sent to Australia from London in 1806.

This book won the Commonwealth Prize, the Christina Stead Prize, and the NSW Premier's Community Relations Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Catherine Elizabeth Grenville (born 1950) is an Australian author.

She has published fifteen books, including fiction, non-fiction, biography, and books about the writing process.

Kate Grenville was born in 1950, one of three children born to Kenneth Grenville Gee, a District Court judge and barrister; and Isobel Russell, a pharmacist.

She was educated at Cremorne Girls High School, the University of Sydney (BA Hons) and the University of Colorado (MA).

After completing her undergraduate degree at the University of Sydney, Grenville worked in the film industry, mostly editing documentaries at Film Australia.

She has also been a teacher of creative writing.

Between 1976 and 1980 she lived in London and Paris, and wrote fiction while supporting herself by doing film-editing, writing, and secretarial jobs.

In 1980 she went to the University of Colorado at Boulder to do a master's degree in creative writing.

She returned to Australia in 1983 and became a sub-editor at SBS Television in the subtitling department.

Kate Grenville's reputation as a short story writer was made by the publication in 1984 of her collection Bearded Ladies.

On its publication, Peter Carey wrote "Here is someone who can really write".

Lilian's Story was her first published novel (1985) and won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award.

It was loosely based on the story of Bea Miles, known in Sydney for her eccentric public behaviour.

She won a literary grant in 1986 and left SBS to pursue her writing.

Dreamhouse followed in 1986, and appeared as the 1994 film Traps.

Joan Makes History – the recipient of an Australian Bicentennial Commission – was published in 1988.

Since the early 1990s she has been an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney.

In 1994 Grenville returned to the characters and setting of Lilian's Story with a companion novel – Dark Places – that re-tells the events of the earlier novel from the point of view of Lilian's incestuous father.

Dark Places won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award in 1995.

(In the US this novel is titled Albion's Story.)

It has become one of Australia's best-loved novels and in 1996 was made into a film starring Ruth Cracknell and Toni Collette; Collette won the Australian Film Institute award for supporting actress for her performance as the young Lilian.

The Idea of Perfection appeared in 2000 and won the Orange Prize for Fiction, at the time Britain's richest literary award.

In 2001, she won the Orange Prize for The Idea of Perfection, and in 2006 she won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for The Secret River.

The Secret River was also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

Her novels have been published worldwide and have been translated into many languages.

Three have been adapted into feature films.

In 2006 she was awarded a Doctorate of Creative Arts by the University of Technology, Sydney under the supervision of Glenda Adams and Paula Hamilton.

She has also been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Sydney, the University of NSW, and Macquarie University.

In 2006 The Secret River was published, the first of Grenville's books that take Australia's colonial past, and relations with Australia's indigenous people, as their subject.

Searching for The Secret River (2006) is a memoir about the research and writing of the novel, tracing the journey of the author's increasing awareness of how Australia's colonial past informs its present.

The Lieutenant (2008) is set thirty years earlier than The Secret River.

Based on the historical notebooks of Lieutenant William Dawes, it tells the story of the friendship between a soldier with the First Fleet and a young Gadigal girl.

These two novels together explore something of the complexity of black-white relations in Australia's past.

In 2017 she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement award from the Australia Council and in 2018 was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia.

Grenville has been married to Robert Steiner and cartoonist Bruce Petty.

She lives in Sydney with her son and daughter.

Her leisure activities include learning to play the cello and performing in an amateur orchestra.

The Secret River was adapted for the stage by Andrew Bovell and toured by the Sydney Theatre Company in 2019.