Literary Lives

Bernadette Brennan is the award-winning biographer of Brian Castro and Helen Garner. Her most recent book, Leaping Into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Douglas Stewart award and won the prestigious Magarey Medal for Biography, the National Biography Award and The Age Book of the Year (non-fiction). Bernadette is also one of five judges for the Miles Franklin Award.

Heather Clark wrote the definitive biography Red Comet: The Short life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath. It was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, was a finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Award, LA Times Book prize in biography and one of The New York Times Top Ten Books of 2022.

Samantha Rose Hill is the author of two books: Hannah Arendt and Hannah Arendt’s Poems (to be released 2023). She regularly contributes to publications including Los Angeles Review of Books, Contemporary Political Theory and The South Atlantic Quarterly. She is currently writing a book on loneliness.

Catriona Menzies-Pike has been the editor of the Sydney Review of Books since 2015. She is the author of a book about running, The Long Run, and numerous essays about literature, culture and feminism. 

Sean O’Beirne grew up in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, and studied arts, law and acting. His first book, the satirical short-story collection A Couple of Things Before the End, was shortlisted for the QLD Literary Awards and the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. His latest book is On Helen Garner. 

Brigitta Olubas edited Shirley Hazzard's essays We Need Silence To Know What We Think and Shirley Hazzard's Collected Stories. She has just published the biography Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life.