"When Helen Garner was announced as the winner of the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction in London on Tuesday night, the 82-year-old Australian author was 16,000km away in Melbourne, watching the ceremony on a live stream at home on what was for her Wednesday morning. When the big moment came, she heard the winner is and then the feed froze. We were going, Oh God!'"
"I'm a stunned mullet, she says, sitting in her study, wrapped in a lilac shawl and with glasses on a cord around her neck. I didn't think I had a chance. She has absolutely no idea what she said in her thank you speech: I think I'm in shock. In her 80s, Garner is experiencing a career high. After decades of being ignored overseas, Australia's Joan Didion has become cool."
Helen Garner won the Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction and received A$100,000 for How to End a Story. The 800-page book compiles frank diary entries kept between 1978 and 1998. She watched the London ceremony from Melbourne on a live stream, and the feed froze at the moment the winner was announced, prompting confusion until congratulations confirmed the result. She described herself as 'a stunned mullet' and said she did not think she had a chance and had no clear memory of her thank-you speech. Renewed international attention and celebrity endorsements have elevated her profile after decades of relative overseas neglect. Her debut novel Monkey Grip initially provoked criticism in 1977 for its autobiographical elements.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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