1. Kate Grenville has published fifteen books, including fiction, non-fiction, biography, and books about the writing process.
20 Facts About Kate Grenville
1. 2.
Kate Grenville's novels have been published worldwide and have been translated into many languages.
3.
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.
4.
Kate Grenville was educated at Cremorne Girls High School, the University of Sydney and the University of Colorado.
5.
Kate Grenville returned to Australia in 1983 and became a sub-editor at SBS Television in the subtitling department.
6.
Kate Grenville won a literary grant in 1986 and left SBS to pursue her writing.
7.
Kate Grenville has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Sydney, the University of NSW, and Macquarie University.
8.
Kate Grenville has been married to Robert Steiner and cartoonist Bruce Petty.
9.
Kate Grenville has written or co-written several books about the writing process which are widely used in creative writing workshops and in schools and universities: The Writing Book, Writing from Start to Finish, and Making Stories.
10.
Restless Dolly Maunder, a novel based on the life of Kate Grenville's grandmother, was published in 2023 and shortlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction.
11.
Kate Grenville has been awarded fellowships from the International Association of University Women and from the Literary Arts Board of the Australia Council.
12.
Kate Grenville's novels have all been published in the UK and US as well as Australia and have been translated into many languages, including German, Swedish, French, Hebrew and Chinese.
13.
Kate Grenville "makes history" both by simply living her life, and by making history by writing it.
14.
Kate Grenville takes that story as a means of exploring a wider theme: the dark legacy of colonialism, especially its impact on Australia's Aboriginal peoples.
15.
Kate Grenville has written a memoir of the research and writing of The Secret River, entitled Searching for the Secret River.
16.
Kate Grenville has used these fragments as the basis for a novel exploring how it might be possible for two people to reach across the gulfs of language and culture that separate them, and arrive at a relationship of mutual warmth and respect.
17.
Kate Grenville has described it as a "mirror-image" of The Secret River.
18.
Kate Grenville has said that the book is set in the 19th century, but is as much about the ugly secrets in Australian history that her own generation inherited.
19.
Kate Grenville says of her books that they are "sometimes inspired by historical events, but they are imaginative constructs, not an attempt to write history".
20.
Some years after her mother died, Kate Grenville put together a book about her, based on the memoirs and recordings her mother left.