Kate Grenville's Biography

Kate Grenville was born in Sydney, Australia in October 1950.

Grenville's The Secret River, which has already won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, was shortlisted for the 2006 Booker prize. Grenville has had accolades before - most notably, The Idea of Perfection won the Orange Prize for Fiction.

Kate Grenville worked and studied in Europe and the USA for several years, although she now lives in her native Sydney. Grenville studied English literature at the University of Sydney but went into the film industry in 1972 and worked her way up to be an editor.

However, travelling through Europe, Kate Grenville stopped in Paris, and, in her own words, wrote two "appalling, atrocious novels" in six months.

Back in Australia, Kate Grenville was earning money editing copy part-time whilst writing Lilian's Story in her spare time.

Lilian's Story was later made into a film starring Ruth Cracknell, Toni Collette and Barry Otto. Kate Grenville's other works include Dark Places (which tells the same story as Lilian's Story but from the perspective of Lilian's father), Joan Makes History, and Dreamhouse (which was adapted into the film Traps, starring Jacqueline MacKenzie).

When Kate Grenville was teaching writing to adults at the University of Sydney, she produced two factual books: The Writing Book; and with Sue Woolfe, she edited Making Stories: How Ten Australian Novels Were Written.