Geraldine Brooks
Geraldine Brooks is an
Australian -
American author, who grew up in the Western suburbs of
Sydney.She attended
Sydney University and worked as a reporter for
The Sydney Morning Herald. As the
Greg Shackleton Memorial Scholar she completed a
Master's Degree in journalism at
Columbia University in
New York City in
1983. Subsequently Brooks worked for
The Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the
Middle East,
Africa and the
Balkans winning in 1990 (with
Tony Horwitz) the Overseas Press Club Award for best print coverage of the first Gulf War.
Her first book,
Nine Parts Of Desire (
1994), based on her experiences among the
Muslim women of the Middle East, was an international bestseller, translated into 17 languages.
Foreign Correspondence (
1997), which won the
Nita B. Kibble Award for women's writing, was a
memoir and travel adventure about a childhood enriched by
penpals from around the world, and her adult quest to find them.
Her first
novel,
Year Of Wonders, published in
2001, is an international bestseller. Set in
1666,
Year Of Wonders follows a young woman's battle to save her fellow villagers and her soul when the
plague suddenly strikes the small
Derbyshire village of
Eyam.
Her second novel,
March, was published in late February
2005. An historical novel set during the
US Civil War, it chronicles the war experiences of the March girls' absent father in
Louisa May Alcott's
Little Women. The novel was generally well received by the critics. In December 2005
March was selected by the
Washington Post as one of the five best fiction works published during the year. In April 2006, the book earned Brooks the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Brooks has been awarded a fellowship at the
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at
Harvard University for
2006.
Brooks married fellow Pulitzer recipient,
Tony Horwitz, in
Tourette-sur-loup,
France, in
1984. They have one child and divide their time between homes in
Virginia,
United States and
Sydney,
Australia.
*
Author's website*
Brooks interview about Pulitzer by Richard Glover on
ABC Local Radio (
Direct link to Real Audio stream) - 18th April 2006
