Janette Turner Hospital (née Turner) (born 1942) is an Australian-born novelist and short story writer who has lived most of her adult life in Canada or the United States, principally Boston, Massachusetts, Kingston, Ontario.and Columbia, South Carolina.Samuels, Selina. "Janette Turner Hospital".Dictionary of Literary Biography: Australian Writers 1975–2000. Ed. Selina Samuels. Farmington Hills: Thomson Gale, 2006: 153–163. She also uses the penname "Alex Juniper".
Early life and education Turner was born in Melbourne, Australia, on 12 November 1942 and grew up in Queensland. She studied at the University of Queensland and Kelvin Grove Teachers College, gaining a BA degree in 1965. She holds an MA degree from Queen's University, Canada, 1973."Janette Turner Hospital". Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 145. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Detroit: The Gale Group, 2001: 291–321.
Career
Turner Hospital published her first story in Atlantic Monthly in 1978, and her first novel, The Ivory Swing, in 1982.
She also teaches literature and creative writing and has been writer-in-residence at universities in Australia, Canada, England and the United States (MIT, Boston University, Colgate University and the University of South Carolina).
She visited the Writer-in-Residence in the MFA program at Columbia University in 2010.
She has published six novels as well as three story collections. Her 2003 novel Due Preparations for the Plague received the Queensland Premier's Award for Fiction.
Her books, such as Oyster and Due Preparations for the Plague, are published in multiple translations."Janette Turner Hospital". Canadian Who's Who 2005. Ed. Elizabeth Lumley. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005: 609.
She is known for her penchant for beginning books with intricate riddles, continuing this pattern with her 2014 novel The Claimant, which delves into the complexities of identity, class, and morality against the backdrop of a wealthy Vanderbilt family's fortune.
Honours and awards Turner Hospital was awarded an honorary D.Litt. from the University of Queensland, Australia, for "services to Australian Literature".University of Queensland alumni site: She has won a number of international literary awards, including the Steele Rudd Award for Best Collection of Short Stories, 2012. She was also a finalist (one of five) for Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction and for the Melbourne Age Book of the Year Award for Fiction.
Bibliography
Novels
The Tiger in the Tiger Pit (1983) Borderline (novel) (1985) Charades (novel) (1988) A Very Proper Death, as Alex Juniper (1990) The Last Magician (1992) Oyster (1996) Due Preparations for the Plague (2003) Orpheus Lost (2007)Callahan, David. Rainforest Narratives: The Work of Janette Turner Hospital. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2009. The Claimant (2014)
Short story collections Dislocations (1986) Isobars (1990) Collected Stories (1995) North of Nowhere, South of Loss (2003)
Selected articles
References
Sources
Brydon, Diana. "The Stone’s Memory: An Interview with Janette Turner Hospital". Commonwealth Novel in English. 4.1 (1991), pp. 14–23. McKay, Belinda. "Transformative Moments: An Interview with Janette Turner Hospital". Queensland Review. 11.2 (December 2004), pp. 1–10 PDF for purchase Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, (ed.) Donald J. Greiner, 48.4 (Summer 2007); dedicated to Janette Turner Hospital Sibree, Bron (2007-08-06) "To listen and learn", outline of JTH's career and review of Orpheus Lost, in the online version of the New Zealand Herald [Accessed 2007-08-28]
External links
Caught in the Creative Act Maureen Clark 'Power, Vanishing Acts and Silent Watchers in Janette Turner Hospital's The Last Magician ' JASAL 8 (2008) Bernadette Brennan 'Words of Water: Reading Otherness in Tourmaline and Oyster ' JASAL 3 (2004) Janette Turner Hospital papers, State Library of Queensland