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Helen Garner (née Ford, born 7 November 1942) is an Australian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist.

Garner's first novel, Monkey Grip, published in 1977, immediately established her as an original voice on the Australian literary scene—it is now widely considered a classic. It relates the lives of a group of fledgling artists, single parents, drug addicts and welfare recipients living in Melbourne share-houses. In particular focus is the increasingly co-dependent relationship between single mother Nora and Javo, a flaky junkie who Nora is in love with, despite him repeatedly drifting in and out of her life. The novel, set in inner-city Melbourne suburbs Fitzroy and Carlton, was written in the domed reading room at the State Library of Victoria, after Garner's teaching dismissal.

Years later she stated that she had adapted it directly from her personal diaries and based the relationship between Nora and Javo on a relationship she had with a man at the time. Other peripheral characters in the book were based on people in Garner's own social circle from Melbourne share-houses. Monkey Grip was very successful: it won the National Book Council Award in 1978 and was adapted into a film in 1982.

She has a reputation for incorporating and adapting her personal experiences in her fiction, something that has brought her widespread attention, particularly with two of her novels, including Monkey Grip and The Spare Room (2008).

Throughout her career, Garner has written both fiction and non-fiction. She attracted controversy with her book The First Stone (1995) about a sexual-harassment scandal in a university college.

She has also written for film and theatre, and has consistently won awards for her work, including the Walkley Award for a 1993 Time magazine report. Adaptations of two of her works have appeared as feature films: her debut novel Monkey Grip and her true-crime book Joe Cinque's Consolation (2004)—the former released in 1982 and the latter in 2016.

Synopsis

In the autumn of 1992, two young women students at Melbourne University went to the police claiming that they had been indecently assaulted at a party. The man they accused was the head of their co-ed residential college.

The controversial book that Helen Garner wrote about the resulting Ormond College sexual harassment case caused a social media storm.

Prominent feminists were outraged at Garner's perceived support for the man involved, but many saw her approach a necessary and much welcome nuance towards the power dynamic between men and women.

Either way, The First Stone sparked a raging debate about sexual harassment in Australia, making it easy to see why even now, 25 years on, the book is no less sharp, no less relevant and no less divisive.

This new edition, coinciding with the 25th Anniversary of release, contains a foreword and an afterword by Garner's biographer, Bernadette Brennan.

It also includes Helen Garner's own 1995 address 'The Fate of The First Stone'.

Reviews

"This was never going to be an easy book to write, its pages are bathed in anguish and self-doubt, but suffused also with a white-hot anger." - Good Weekend

"Garner has ensured one thing: the debate about sexual harassment will now have a very public airing. And it will have it in the language of experience to which all women and men have access." - The Age

"This is writing of great boldness an intense, eloquent and enthralling work." - The Australian

On Media

Audiobook on CD-ROM, complete with artwork on CD. Supplied in windowed CD sleeve, no case provided.

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