Kerry Greenwood: biography, literary activity

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Kerry Greenwood's name is well known to lovers of quality literature from all over the globe. For many years, the writer has been pleasing loyal fans not only with wonderful works about the life, life and destinies of the adult population of Australia, but also skillfully creates wonderful children's works filled with kindness and fairy-tale magic. During her long creative career, which, by the way, is still going on with success, the woman has written many fascinating stories for book lovers of all ages. Surprisingly, Kerry Greenwood's talent is truly inexhaustible, and the writer fills book after book with her positive atmosphere.

The fame of a recognized detective master, a talented storyteller, a skilled intriguer and a great inventor and dreamer has not left the writer since the release of her first book more than forty years ago. At present, to all the above titles, the title of "Honorary Writer of Australia" has been added, which has been confirmed more than once by various authoritative literary critics, as well as variousawards in the field of fiction and journalistic literature.

Writer

Kerry Greenwood is perhaps one of the most fun, interesting and humorous foreign writers who have taken up work in the detective genre. It is difficult to find a more resourceful inventor and tireless storyteller than she is. With unruffled calmness, Kerry describes the exciting adventures of his characters, carefully developing the characters' personalities and focusing the reader's attention on the smallest details that seem completely unimportant at first glance, but play a key role in the narrative.

Early years

Kerry Greenwood was born on June 17, 1954 in the small town of Footscray, which was located near Melbourne. The Greenwood family owned a small farm and were quite prosperous, which allowed Kerry to get a good education in a private school. The girl did not like to study, but she had an incredible craving for studying everything that was happening around. She was interested in absolutely everything: from the installation of a water tap to the principles of operation of a lawn mower. The young years of the writer passed in a carefree atmosphere of games and constant fun. As a child, her father took her to work with him, and Kerry was forced to look for entertainment for herself, or play with the children of exactly the same farmers.

After graduating from school, the girl failed the exam at the university and had to go look for a job in local institutions, but she could not settle down anywhere, having moved to Melbourne.

Lifesearches

The difficult process of finding a job in the biography of Kerry Greenwood was accompanied by an equally difficult process of finding yourself. A purposeful and lively girl could not find her place in life, which forced her to often change her place of work and occupation. Often, the changes were so drastic that even Kerry herself was shocked.

One of Greenwood's first activities was to perform Australian folklore. The girl was very pretty, besides, she had outstanding vocal abilities and artistic talent, which significantly affected her popularity. Kerry Greenwood quickly became quite famous in the narrow circles of folk music lovers and even recorded several songs in the studio, having issued all her work in several tapes with demo recordings. However, fate decreed otherwise - and the disc, on which Carrey worked hard, never came out.

Without losing hope for the future and changing profession, Kerry gets a job as a worker at a textile factory, where she acquires a large number of skills in working with fabrics. After working at the factory for about two years, the girl leaves the company and gets a job in an atelier, where for several more months, using the experience gained at the factory, she works as a cutter.

Soon the young woman gets tired of working with textiles, and Kerry Greenwood goes to cooking classes, gets a chef's license and works in her speci alty for a while. In those days, restaurants in Australia had a relatively small salary, and soonambitious Greenwood sets out to look for a new job.

Closer to the true destination

Good knowledge of several languages allows her to get a job as a translator in an independent office that specializes in adapting various "tabloid literature". For some time, Greenwood has been translating melodramas, detective stories, family reading literature and romance novels.

Repetitive work with almost the same texts forces a talented girl to look for a new job, which has become the position of assistant director at the local theater. From there, Katherine gets on Australian television, immediately becoming the director of several popular science programs. The girl devotes several years of her life to the television sphere of her native country, actively engaging not only in the creative, but also in the technical aspects of video production.

Innate taste, a subtle sense of style, the ability to work in a team and fulfill the promise quickly make Kerry a well-known TV director by the standards of the country, and soon the girl begins to take the post of executive producer in fairly large projects.

Kerry Greenwood liked working with video materials, but subconsciously she felt that she was still working in a field far from her true creative calling. With extensive experience in scriptwriting and translation of fiction, as well as a huge store of life stories and interesting memories, the girl decides to start working on her first novel.

Writing career

Surprisingly, the beginningThe girl's creative career coincided with her graduation from the University of Melbourne, where Greenwood studied for five years on a course in theoretical social science and jurisprudence. The girl was incredibly interested in the processes taking place in society, as well as the reasons leading to these processes, and this interest soon merged in her soul with creativity, becoming the basis of a rapid literary career and the popularity of Kerry Greenwood's books.

Realizing her true calling, the girl first moves to the province and gets a job at the District Court of the town of Footscray, which allows her to receive a guaranteed salary and devote herself completely to literary experiments.

After trying her hand at short fiction and publishing a few everyday stories about suburbanites in the local newspaper, Kerry decides to write a series of detective novels, which was directly promoted by her official work. Few believed at the time that in the future all of Carrie Greenwood's books would become world bestsellers, and her detective novels would win the hearts of millions of readers around the world.

The writer herself, remembering those times, says with a smile that she had everything she needed for success - a room, a typewriter and plenty of free time.

Miss Fisher series

In 1985, Kerry Greenwood published her first book about Miss Fisher, who is a practicing private detective. The debut novel was a resounding success. Of course, Greenwood did not receive the glory of the literary creations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,however, she gained notoriety in serious literary circles in Australia. Inspired by her success, the writer sets to work, creating an anthology of works about the heroine beloved by readers over the course of several years.

In the early 1990s, many publishing houses decide to re-release all of Kerry Greenwood's Miss Fisher books in order, giving readers a unique opportunity to familiarize themselves with all the adventures of an outstanding detective girl.

Earthly joys

A novel about a girl accountant who opened a bakery in the center of Melbourne and accidentally became an outstanding detective, partly based on the biography of the writer herself. Such a bizarre name for the book appeared because, according to the sincere assurances of the author, it describes only the worldly joys of a simple life. Such small nice things, like a delicious dinner, a warm fire or an early morning horseback ride.

Earthly Joys by Kerry Greenwood not only repeated the success of the author's previous detective series, but also became a special novel that showed the reading public a completely different facet of a woman's writing skills.

Private life

According to the writer herself, her personal life is "three cats, an old Apple computer and some time devoted to needlework." The woman devoted herself entirely to her literary career, having lost the very simple joys of life that she describes in her works.

Popularity

The writer's fame grew substantially after all of Kerry Greenwood's Miss Fisher books in sequence were reprinted in huge numbers. It was then that the woman became popular not only in English-speaking countries, but throughout the world, as the anthology was translated into many languages. Some of the translations were done by Greenwood herself.

Criticism

The serious literary community did not immediately accept Greenwood's work. Many critics disagreed about the originality of her work, recalling the adventures of Miss Marple, written by Agatha Christie, or the tireless and ubiquitous Father Brown, who came out from the pen of the famous writer Gilbert Chesterton.

However, later a number of literary critics still recognized the works of the writer as original. Critics noted the amazing originality of the presentation, the simplicity and clarity of the plot, combined with incredibly intricate intrigues and secrets. Also acclaimed was Greenwood's creative style, which was first showcased in Kerry Greenwood's debut Miss Fisher novel, Labyrinth.

Reviews

Since the publication of the very first detective novel in the provincial publishing house of her hometown, Kerry has received only positive reviews about her works. Of course, there were those people who, for one reason or another, did not like the girl's creative experiments, but most of the comments still carried kind words and calls to continue following the literary path.

The writer admits that in difficult times she always reads letters fromsimple people, simple hard workers like herself, and this is what gives her the strength to continue working and see only the good in everything.