Janet Frame - writer
[Quote]
"There is no past or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water." 
Biography
[Early Life]
She was born on 28 August 1924 in Dunedin and in 1931, her family moved to Oamaru where is her father's home town. Later, she called this town "kingdom by the sea". Since she was a child, she loved words and writing. It was obvious that she had a great talent of writing. However, in 1945, she was working as a trainee teacher and she was suffering from her feeling that she was not good enough as a teacher. Also, one of her family member died and she got shocked. As a result of these things, she was deeply depressed and she was diagnosed as schizophrenia (but actually she was not) and she had to stay in a mental hospital for several years.
[Later life]
Although she had two strokes, they were not so serious. She got inuluenced negatively by these strokes phisically and mentally, but she kept writing until she passed away on January 29th in 2004. She was 79 years old at that time.
[Important jobs]
The most famous writer in NZ
Member of the Order of New Zealand
[Important events]
- In 1955, after leaving the mental hospiatl, she went to Takapuna, Auckland in order to stay wih Frank Sargeson who was a leading expert on NZ writers. She wrote the first novel there.
- She travelled Europe in 1956 and she finished writing five books in London.
[Awards and achievemnt]
・Novels
- 1957 Owls Do Cry
- 1961 Faces in the Water
- 1962 The Edge of the Alphabet
- 1963 Scented Gardens for the Blind
- 1965 The Adaptable Man etc...
- 1951 The Lagoon and Other Stories
- 1963 The Reservoir: Stories and Sketches/Snowman Snowman: Fables and Fantasies.
- 1983. You Are Now Entering the Human Heart
- 1951: Hubert Church Prose Award (The Lagoon and other Stories)
- 1956: New Zealand Literary Fund Grant
- 1958: New Zealand Literary Fund Award for Achievement (Owls Do Cry) etc...
[Video]
In This video, Janet Frame is talking about her experience in the U.S. and London and how these things inluenced her works. She said that at the dentist in London, she got some idea of The Adaptable Man.
[Contribution to New Zealand]
By writing many novels and poems, she enriches not only New Zealanders' but also people's who live in different countries. Through her novels and poems, many people all over the world could imagine what NZ is like and as a result of this, NZ came to be known internationally.
Moe
