Jessica Anderson (writer)

Jessica Anderson
Anderson in 1984
Born	Jessica Margaret Queale (1916-09-25)25 September 1916 Gayndah, Queensland, Australia
Died	9 July 2010(2010-07-09) (aged 93) Elizabeth Bay, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation	Novelist, short story writer
Nationality	Australian
Period	1963–1994
Notable works	Tirra Lirra by the River, The Impersonators
Notable awards	Miles Franklin Literary Award 1978 Tirra Lirra by the River 1980 The Impersonators New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards 1978 The Impersonators

Jessica Margaret Anderson (née Queale; 25 September 1916 – 9 July 2010) was an Australian novelist and short story writer. Born in Gayndah, Anderson lived the bulk of her life in Sydney apart from a few years in London. She began her career writing short stories for newspapers and drama scripts for radio, especially adaptations of well-known novels. Embarking on her career as a novelist relatively late in life - her first novel was published when she was 47 - her early novels attracted little attention. She rose to prominence upon the publication of her fourth novel, Tirra Lirra by the River, published in 1978. Although she remains best known for this work, several of her novels have garnered high acclaim, most notably The Impersonators (1980) and Stories from the Warm Zone and Sydney Stories (1987), both of which have won awards. She won the Miles Franklin Literary Award twice, and has been published in Britain and the United States. Jessica Anderson died at Elizabeth Bay, New South Wales in 2010, following a stroke.^[1] She was the mother of Australian screenwriter Laura Jones, her only child.