Jean Bedford
| Jean Bedford | |
|---|---|
| Born | 4 February 1946 |
| Occupation | Novelist, short story writer, essayist |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Genre | Crime fiction |
Jean Bedford (born 4 February 1946) is an English-born Australian writer who is best known for her crime fiction, but who has also written novels and short stories, as well as nonfiction. She is also an editor and journalist, and has taught creative writing in several universities for over 20 years.
Bedford was born in Cambridge, England and came to Australia as an infant. She grew up in country Victoria on the Mornington Peninsula. She undertook her Bachelor of Arts degree at Monash University and then studied Teaching English as a Second Language at the University of Papua New Guinea where she had gone with her first husband.
After the failure of her first marriage, she returned to Australia and worked at the Canberra College of Advanced Education. She later married writer Peter Corris, with whom she has had three daughters. One of their daughters, Sofya Gollan, is an actress who is also deaf.
Bedford and Corris live in the Illawarra region on the south coast of New South Wales. She includes Australian writers Gabrielle Lord and Helen Garner among her friends.
Bedford has had a varied career. In addition to writing, she has worked as a teacher, journalist, editor and publisher, and has lectured in creative writing at several universities. Her literary career has included being literary editor for the National Times and a literary consultant for the Australian Film Commission.
Bedford says that she first started to think of writing seriously when she worked at the Canberra College of Advanced Education. Her first writings, short stories, were published in the Nation Review. Her first book was Country Girl Again, published by Sisters in 1979.
Her first novel, Sister Kate, explores the Ned Kelly legend from the point of view of Ned's sister, Kate. Bedford says she was inspired to write it after reading the American novel Desperadoes which she felt dealt with national myth in a way that Australian writers didn't. The book was well received and regularly appears on school syllabi in Australia. By the time it was published she was at Stanford University on the Australian Stanford Writers Fellowship.
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