Novelist and short story writer; Teacher of creative writing
Spouse
Gordon Adams (divorced)
Partner
Chris Clarke
Children
1
Glenda Emilie Adams (née Felton; 30 December 1939 – 11 July 2007) was an Australian novelist and short story writer, probably best known as the winner of the 1987 Miles Franklin Award for Dancing on Coral. She was a teacher of creative writing, and helped develop writing programs.
She was a cousin of Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, but held opposing political views and wanted to become a political journalist.[3] She moved to New York City when she won a scholarship to study at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and graduated in 1965. During this time, she met Gordon Adams, a political scientist at Columbia. They married in 1967 and had a daughter, Caitlin, before divorcing.
She worked as a lecturer at a number of tertiary institutions, including Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College, before returning to Australia and the University of Technology, Sydney. Her subject was writing skills and creative writing. She helped design the master of arts writing program at the university, a program which became a model for postgraduate writing programs throughout Australia.[3] For the rest of her life, she traveled regularly between New York to see her daughter and teach at Columbia, and Sydney. Glenda Adams died on 11 July 2007 in Sydney, following a battle with ovarian cancer and secondary brain tumours.[3] Her funeral was held on 18 July.[4] She was posthumously awarded the biennial ASA Medal of the Australian Society of Authors.[5]
Adams started writing at the age of 10, with the encouragement of her mother.[3]
While at Columbia University, she joined a fiction workshop and started writing using her real name, after using a male name prior to that to prevent her friends knowing she was writing fiction.[3] Her short stories were published in such magazines as Ms., The Village Voice and Harper's.
In 1987, her second novel, Dancing on Coral won the Miles Franklin Award and the New South Wales Premier's Literary Award but a residential rule for the latter resulted in her being denied it. Instead, the prize money was used for a fellowship for a young writer and she was compensated with a special award (with no money attached).[3] Her third novel, Longleg, published in 1990, was also an award-winner. Her fourth novel, The Tempest of Clemenza was published in both Australia and the United States in 1996, and in 1998, her play, The Monkey Trap, was performed at the Griffin Theatre, in Sydney.
^"Adams, Glenda". AustLit. Retrieved 15 July 2007.(subscription required)
^"ASA Medal". Australian Society of Authors. Archived from the original on 3 February 2017. Retrieved 17 February 2015.
^review of "Searching for the secret river", 2006-12-06, accessed 2009-08-02. Glenda Adams, along with Paula Hamilton supervised Grenville's Doctorate of Creative Writing in 2006.
