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

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LONDON (AP) — Helen Garner, an acclaimed Australian writer whose celebrity fans include singer Dua Lipa, won the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize for nonfiction on Tuesday for what judges called her addictive and candid diaries.

Garner, 82, was named winner of the 50,000 pound ($65,000) prize at a ceremony in London for “How to End a Story.” Journalist Robbie Millen, who chaired the prize jury, said Garner was the unanimous choice of the six judges.

Millen said the judges were captivated by the sharp observation and “reckless candor” of Garner’s 800-page book, which covers her life and work between 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 new heights.

“There are places it’s toe-curlingly embarrassing. She puts it all out there,” Millen said, adding that Garner ranks alongside those of Virginia Woolf in the canon of great literary diarists.

Garner, who has published novels, short stories, screenplays and true crime books, said she was “staggered” to have won the prize for diaries she wrote entirely for herself.

“I never thought that I was writing for anyone but myself and that’s what’s good about them, I think — that I’m free when I’m writing," she told The Associated Press from Melbourne, Australia.

“Those are the hours of practice that in a sense turned me into a writer. Because I’ve been keeping a diary since I was a girl — and I’ve burnt most of it, of course. I burnt it up until about the late 1970s. But it’s my 10,000 hours and it’s my enormous daily practice. So you never expect that to be out in the public eye. But it is.”

“How to End a Story” is a deeply intimate book that among other things recounts, with unsparing detail and flashes of humor, the breakdown of a marriage.

Despite the risk involved in such public soul-baring, Garner says the reaction of readers has made the experience life-affirming.

“What I write about — my life and my experience and my, not to put too fine a point on it, soul — there are so many people who know what I mean and who’ve been there. And that’s been a great joy to me to discover that,” she said. “The deeper I go, the more other people I find there.”

Garner’s book is the first set of diaries to win the prize, which was founded in 1999 and recognizes English-language books in current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.

Garner’s 1977 first novel “Monkey Grip” – the semi-autobiographical story of a single mother in bohemian inner-city Melbourne – is considered a modern Australian classic. Her work includes the novella “The Children’s Bach,” screenplays including “The Last Days of Chez Nous” and true crime books including “This House of Grief,” which Lipa chose this year for her monthly book club.

The singer said Garner’s work was “a thrilling discovery. She’s one of the most fascinating writers I have come across in years.”

Garner is co-author of “The Mushroom Tapes: Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial,” a book about Erin Patterson, the Australian woman who killed three of her estranged husband’s relatives with a lunch containing death cap mushrooms. It is published in Australia and the U.K. this month.

Garner is less well known outside her home country, with U.S. and U.K. publishers only recently publishing many of her books.

“It has taken us a long while to work out how good she is,” Millen said. “Finally her status is being recognized, and I hope this will cement it.”

Garner is the second Australian in a row to win the Baillie Gifford prize. Last year’s winner was Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan for his genre-bending memoir “Question 7.”