Australia's Helen Garner wins Baillie Gifford nonfiction prize for her 'addictive' diaries

LONDON -- Helen Garner, an acclaimed Australian writer whose personage fans see vocalist Dua Lipa, won the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction connected Tuesday for what judges called her addictive and candid diaries.

Garner, 82, was named victor of the 50,000 lb ($65,000) prize astatine a ceremonial successful London for “How to End a Story.” Journalist Robbie Millen, who chaired the prize jury, said Garner was the unanimous prime of the six judges.

Millen said the judges were captivated by the crisp reflection and “reckless candor” of Garner’s 800-page book, which covers her beingness and enactment betwixt 1978 and 1998.

He said it is “a remarkable, addictive book. Garner takes the diary form, mixing the intimate, the intellectual, and the everyday, to caller heights.

“There are places it’s toe-curlingly embarrassing. She puts it each retired there,” Millen said, adding that Garner ranks alongside those of Virginia Woolf successful the canon of large literate diarists.

Garner, who has published novels, abbreviated stories, screenplays and existent transgression books, said she was “staggered” to person won the prize for diaries she wrote wholly for herself.

“I ne'er thought that I was penning for anyone but myself and that’s what’s bully astir them, I deliberation — that I’m escaped erstwhile I’m writing," she told The Associated Press from Melbourne, Australia.

“Those are the hours of signifier that successful a consciousness turned maine into a writer. Because I’ve been keeping a diary since I was a miss — and I’ve burnt astir of it, of course. I burnt it up until astir the precocious 1970s. But it’s my 10,000 hours and it’s my tremendous regular practice. So you ne'er expect that to beryllium retired successful the nationalist eye. But it is.”

“How to End a Story” is simply a profoundly intimate publication that among different things recounts, with unsparing item and flashes of humor, the breakdown of a marriage.

Despite the hazard progressive successful specified nationalist soul-baring, Garner says the absorption of readers has made the acquisition life-affirming.

“What I constitute astir — my beingness and my acquisition and my, not to enactment excessively good a constituent connected it, psyche — determination are truthful galore radical who cognize what I mean and who’ve been there. And that’s been a large joyousness to maine to observe that,” she said. “The deeper I go, the much different radical I find there.”

Garner’s publication is the archetypal acceptable of diaries to triumph the prize, which was founded successful 1999 and recognizes English-language books successful existent affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.

Garner’s 1977 archetypal caller “Monkey Grip” – the semi-autobiographical communicative of a azygous parent successful bohemian inner-city Melbourne – is considered a modern Australian classic. Her enactment includes the novella “The Children’s Bach,” screenplays including “The Last Days of Chez Nous” and existent transgression books including “This House of Grief,” which Lipa chose this twelvemonth for her monthly publication club.

The vocalist said Garner’s enactment was “a thrilling discovery. She’s 1 of the astir fascinating writers I person travel crossed successful years.”

Garner is co-author of “The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations connected a Triple Murder Trial,” a publication astir Erin Patterson, the Australian pistillate who killed 3 of her estranged husband’s relatives with a luncheon containing decease headdress mushrooms. It is published successful Australia and the U.K. this month.

Garner is little good known extracurricular her location country, with U.S. and U.K. publishers lone precocious publishing galore of her books.

“It has taken america a agelong portion to enactment retired however bully she is,” Millen said. “Finally her presumption is being recognized, and I anticipation this volition cement it.”

Garner is the 2nd Australian successful a enactment to triumph the Baillie Gifford prize. Last year’s victor was Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan for his genre-bending memoir “Question 7.”