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Andrea Goldsmith is an Australian writer and novelist, known for her 2002 novel The Prosperous Thief.

Early life and education

Goldsmith was born in Melbourne, Victoria, to an Australian-Jewish family.[1] She started learning the piano at the age of 8, and music remains an abiding passion.[1]

Career

Goldsmith initially trained as a speech pathologist and worked for several years with children suffering from severe communication impairment until becoming a full-time writer in the late 1980s.[2]

From 1987 and through the 1990s she taught creative writing at Deakin University, and as of 2021 continues to conduct workshops and mentor new novelists.[3]

She travels widely, and London, in particular, figures prominently in her novels. At the same time, she describes herself as 'a deeply Melbourne person'.[4]

She also writes literary essays on topics as diverse as Oliver Sacks ("Oliver Sacks: Anthropologist of Mind"), nuclear physics, and life-threatening illness ("Chain Reaction") and Jewish Australian identity ("Talmudic Excursions").[citation needed]

While a writer-in-residence at La Trobe University, she edited an anthology written by a group of people with gambling problems, called Calling A Spade A Spade. She conducts workshops and short courses for writers of fiction, and she mentors new novelists.[citation needed]

She has been a guest at all the major literary festivals in Australia, and appeared at the 2009 Sydney Writers' Festival.[citation needed]

Awards

Personal life

As of 2019 Goldsmith was living in Clifton Hill, in Melbourne's inner suburbs, in a house she bought with her partner, the poet Dorothy Porter.[7] She continued to live there following Porter's death in 2008.[8]

Selected works

Novels

References

  1. ^ a b "Andrea Goldsmith biography". Andrea Goldsmith. 20 October 2012. Retrieved 5 April 2019.
  2. ^ Sullivan, Jane (5 April 2019). "Andrea Goldsmith: The joy of fiction is getting behind the characters' masks". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
  3. ^ "Andrea Goldsmith". AustLit. Archived from the original on 16 May 2018. Retrieved 9 September 2021.
  4. ^ Dooley, Gillian (August 2014). "They All Begin with an Idea: A Conversation with Andrea Goldsmith" (PDF). Writers in Conversation. 1 (2): 13 – via Flinders University archive.
  5. ^ "Literature". Melbourne Prize Trust. Retrieved 11 November 2023.
  6. ^ Steger, Jason (11 November 2015). "Poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe wins the Melbourne Prize for Literature". The Age. Retrieved 11 November 2023.
  7. ^ Sullivan, Jane (5 April 2019). "Andrea Goldsmith: The joy of fiction is getting behind the characters' masks". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
  8. ^ "Porter dead at 54", Sydney Star Observer, 10 December 2008, archived from the original on 18 December 2008, retrieved 19 December 2008
  9. ^ Anderson, Don (November 2002). "The Prosperous Thief by Andrea Goldsmith". Australian Book Review (246). Retrieved 16 October 2020.
  10. ^ Case, Jo (June 2009). "'Reunion' by Andrea Goldsmith". The Monthly. Retrieved 16 October 2020.
  11. ^ Swinn, Louise (10 May 2019). "Invented Lives review: Andrea Goldsmith on the importance of the past". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 16 October 2020.

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