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Patricia Shaw (novelist)

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Patricia Shaw (born 1929 in Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian novelist and non-fiction writer. She currently lives on the Gold Coast, Queensland, in northeast Australia.

Biography

Patricia Shaw read History at university and subsequently assisted the Governor of Queensland as a textwriter. Since 1983, she has led the Oral History Department of the Library of Parliament and written two works of non-fiction regarding Australia's era of settlement.

Shaw was 52 years old before she began to write fiction. Among her many novels, most of which centre on the settlement of the Australian hinterland and which earned her the sobriquet of "Australia's Chronicler", the most widely known are River of the Sun (1991) and The Opal Seekers (1996).

Patricia began her writing career after her daughter, Desiree Shaw, won the lottery, landing her a hefty sum of 2 million Australian dollars. With a small amount of this money Patricia was able to buy herself a house at the Gold Coast and begin writing. One of Patricia's books, 'The Glittering Fields', tells the story of this event and how it changed her life. A lot of Patricia's popularity and success came from overseas. Her books were extremely successful in Germany. Patricia spent a lot of her time in Germany because of this and earned herself the nickname "The Frankfurt Poet".

Patricia Shaw is also actively involved in the protection of Australia's native animals and birds.

Awards

2004 Corine Literature Prize (readers' choice award) for The Five Winds.

Bibliography

Non-fiction

  • Brother Digger (1984)
  • Pioneers of a Trackless Land

Fiction

  • Valley of Lagoons (1989)
  • River of the Sun (1991)
  • The Feather and the Stone (1992)
  • Where the Willows Weep (1993, sequel to Valley of Lagoons)
  • Cry of the Rainbird (1994)
  • Fire Fortune (1995)
  • The Opal Seekers (1996)
  • Glittering Fields (1997)
  • A Cross of Stars (1998)
  • Orchid Bay (1999)
  • Waiting for the Thunder (2000, the sequel to The Feather and the Stone)
  • On Emerald Downs (2002)
  • The Five Winds (2003, the sequel to Orchid Bay)
  • Storm Bay (2005)
  • Mango Hill (2007, the sequel to Where the Willows Weep")

References

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