Helen Hodgman (27 April 1945 – 6 June 2022)"Vale Helen Hodgman"
by David Winter,

Text Publishing Text Publishing is an independent Australian publisher of fiction and non-fiction, based in Melbourne, Victoria. Company background Text Media was founded in Melbourne in 1990 by Diana Gribble and Eric Beecher, along with designer Chong Weng ...

, 15 June 2022 was an Australian novelist. She won the 1978

Somerset Maugham Award The Somerset Maugham Award is a British literary prize given each year by the Society of Authors. Set up by William Somerset Maugham in 1947 the awards enable young writers to enrich their work by gaining experience in foreign countries. The awa ...

for her novel ''Jack and Jill''. She also won the 1989 Christina Stead Fiction Prize for the novel ''Broken Words''. __NOTOC__

Career

Hodgman was born in

Aberdeen Aberdeen (; sco, Aiberdeen ; gd, Obar Dheathain ; la, Aberdonia) is a city in North East Scotland, and is the third most populous city in the country. Aberdeen is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas (as Aberdeen City), and ...

, Scotland. On publication of her first novel, British critic

Auberon Waugh Auberon Alexander Waugh (17 November 1939 – 16 January 2001) was an English journalist and novelist, and eldest son of the novelist Evelyn Waugh. He was widely known by his nickname "Bron". After a traditional classical education at Downsid ...

, referred to her as "a born writer with a style and an elan which is all her own". In 1983 Hodgman was diagnosed with

Parkinson's disease Parkinson's disease (PD), or simply Parkinson's, is a long-term degenerative disorder of the central nervous system that mainly affects the motor system. The symptoms usually emerge slowly, and as the disease worsens, non-motor symptoms becom ...

, which, by 2001 had deprived her of the ability to write. She died in 2022 aged 77 in Sydney.

Works

Novels

* ''Blue Skies'', London: Duckworth, 1976 ; translated into German: ''Gleichbleibend schön'' (2012) * ''Jack and Jill'', London: Duckworth, 1978 ; translated into German: ''Jack & Jill'' (2015) * ''Broken Words'', Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin, 1988 ; US edition: ''Ducks'', Harmony, 1989 * ''Waiting for Matindi'', St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1998 * ''Passing Remarks'', Sydney: Anchor Books, 1996 * ''The Bad Policeman'', Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2001

Screenplay

* ''The Right Hand Man'', for the 1987 film directed by Di Drew and starring

Rupert Everett Rupert James Hector Everett (; born 29 May 1959) is an English actor, director and producer. Everett first came to public attention in 1981 when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film '' Another Country'' (1984) as a gay pupi ...

Hugo Weaving Hugo Wallace Weaving (born 4 April 1960) is an English actor. Born in Colonial Nigeria to English parents, he has resided in Australia for the entirety of his career. He is the recipient of six Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts ...

and Arthur Dignam, based on the 1977 novel of the same name by K. M. Peyton.

References

1945 births 2022 deaths 20th-century Australian novelists 21st-century Australian novelists Australian women novelists 20th-century Australian women writers 21st-century Australian women writers Scottish emigrants to Australia Writers from Aberdeen {{Australia-writer-stub