Shirley Hazzard (1931-2016) is the author of novels, nonfiction, and story collections. Her 1970 novel, The Bay of Noon, was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010, and The Great Fire won the US National Book Award for Fiction, the Miles Franklin Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal. She also wrote non-fiction, including two books based on her experiences working at the United Nations Secretariat. She was born in Australia, and in early years traveled the world with her parents due to their diplomatic postings. At sixteen, living in Hong Kong, she was engaged by British Intelligence, where, in 1947-48, she was involved in monitoring the civil war in China. Thereafter, she lived in New Zealand and in Europe; in the United States, where she worked for the United Nations Secretariat in New York; and in Italy. In 1963, she married the writer Francis Steegmuller, who died in 1994. |
