The much-admired Victorian writer Beverley Farmer, who won the Patrick White award in 2009, has died. She was 77 and had suffered from Parkinson's Disease for some time.
Farmer was not a prolific writer and kept something of a low profile. She published nine books, beginning her literary career with her first novel, Alone, in 1980 and ending it with what she announced would be her last book, This Water: Five Tales, which the Fairfax review said displayed her "masterly control of structure, tone and imagery".
Beverley Farmer – from a photograph published in 1995.
Ivor Indyk, her publisher at Giramondo, said Farmer had been an influential writer.
"Beverley was one of the great innovators of Australian literature. She opened the forms of fiction to myth and fairytale, reworking these to feminist ends; and she pushed the language relentlessly, to capture the fleeting moments of perception, and the fluctuations of nature. She was intelligent, determined, generous, and a great supporter of those who shared her commitment to the highest literary values."
Farmer had a long relationship with Greece, having lived there for a few years with her husband before their marriage ended. But the country's influence percolated through much of her writing and she said she had an ongoing vital connection to it. "It's Greece where I truly belong in my heart."
