A celebration of the beloved and critically acclaimed Hazel Rowley, Life as Art invites readers into the mind of this world-leading biographer and pays tribute to her enduring legacy.
Hazel Rowley was an award-winning biographer who was committed to telling the stories of people’s lives. This collection of short pieces-journal articles, essays, talks, diary entries – provides a wonderful insight into her craft.
In these pages she talks honestly about the joys, the challenges, the highs and the lows of writing biography. Much of the material is previously unpublished and reveals Rowley’s lively ideas on a range of topics.
Before her untimely death in 2011, Rowley wrote four acclaimed biographies: about Christina Stead, Richard Wright, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
This new collection gives a rich store of reflections on biography and draws the reader into Rowley’s passionate pursuit of stories and her search for new biographical subjects.
Della Rowley is Hazel Rowley’s younger sister and literary executor. She lives in Adelaide, where she and Hazel grew up. Della was fortunate to experience Hazel’s wonderful imagination and inspirational energy and talent.
Lynn Buchanan was a close friend of Hazel’s for thirty years. She shared many conversations with Hazel on the joys and despairs of writing biography.
Della and Lynn, along with Hazel’s friend Irene Tomaszewski, established the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship in her memory.
“My books are all, in their different ways, voyages of discovery. I write books to learn, to stretch my horizons. These voyages of mine are full of risk and passion.” – Hazel Rowley
Life as Art: The Biographical Writing of Hazel Rowley is published by Melbourne University Publishing (The Miegunyah Press) and available from all leading book sellers including Booktopia.
Image: Life as Art: The Biographical Writing of Hazel Rowley – courtesy of Melbourne University Publishing