Helen Garner is one of Australia’s best known and admired living writers who has always explored multiple forms of storytelling • This is the first full length study of Helen Garner’s work and life • Brennan examines the fascinating question of just who is the ‘I’ in Garner’s work • Written with the approval and assistance of Helen Garner • Bernadette Brennan is a leading expert on contemporary Australian fiction who was given exclusive access to previously embargoed archives • Garner is seen by readers as honest, authentic and familiar, a writer who courts controversy with her direct approach to life and appears to write so much of herself into her books • Garner’s work and life inform and shape each other to such a degree that it is not possible to understand one without the other. A Writing Life offers a rich and complex portrait of Garner • A very accessible study of Helen Garner and her work that maps Garner’s work against different stages of her life written for the general reader