Geraldine Brooks

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This article is about the Australian writer. For the television actress, see Geraldine Brooks (actor).
Geraldine Brooks

Born 1955
Occupation Journalist, writer
Nationality Australian-American
Genres Historical fiction

Geraldine Brooks (born 1955) is an Australian-American journalist and author. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2006 for March.

Contents

[edit] Early life and career

Brooks was born in October 1955 and grew up in the Western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. She attended the all-girls' Bethlehem College in Sydney, and then Sydney University. She later 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 — in 1990, for coverage of the Persian Gulf, Brooks (with Tony Horwitz) received the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for "Best newspaper or wire service reporting from abroad".[1]

Brooks was 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. She also converted to Judaism, which is the religion of Tony Horwitz.[2] They have a son, Nathaniel, and divide their time between homes in Martha's Vineyard, United States and Sydney, Australia.

[edit] Works

March (novel) Cover
March (novel) Cover

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 Kibble Literary 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 U.S. Civil War, it chronicles the war experiences of the March girls' absent father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. The parallel 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.[3]

March seems to have had its roots in Brooks' childhood. A copy of Little Women was given to Brooks when she was only ten years old, by her mother Gloria, a journalist and radio announcer.

People of the Book, published in January 2008, is a fictionalised account of the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah.

[edit] Bibliography

  • (1997) Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey From Down Under to All Over. Doubleday. ISBN 0385482698. 

[edit] References

  1. ^ OPC Awards: 1990 Award Winners. Overseas Press Club of America. Retrieved on 2006-12-21.
  2. ^ j. - The wandering Haggadah
  3. ^ The Pulitzer Prizes — 2006 Winners. The Pulitzer Board. Retrieved on 2006-12-21.

[edit] External links


Persondata
NAME Brooks, Geraldine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION Contemporary Pulitzer Prize-winning, Australian-American journalist and author.
DATE OF BIRTH 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
Languages