‘Addictive’ diaries win prestigious non-fiction prize

A set of diaries has gained the distinguished Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for the primary time.

How to End a Story: Collected Diaries by Helen Garner charts the Australian author’s life from the early levels of her profession in bohemian Melbourne, to elevating her daughter within the Nineteen Seventies, and her expertise of a disintegrating marriage within the Nineties.

Garner’s earlier work contains 2014’s The House of Grief, which advised the story of Robert Farquharson on trial for the homicide of his three sons.

Famous followers embody fellow author David Nicholls, and singer Dua Lipa, who mentioned: “Helen Garner’s work is a thrilling discovery. She’s one of the most fascinating writers I have come across.”

Chair of judges, Robbie Millen, mentioned How to End a Story was the judges’ unanimous winner, praising it as “a remarkable, addictive book”.

“Garner takes the diary form, mixing the intimate, the intellectual, and the everyday, to new heights,” he continued.

“She is a brilliant observer and listener – every page has a surprising, sharp or amusing thought. Her collected diaries will surely be mentioned alongside The Diary of Virginia Woolf.”

In her evaluate, the Observer’s Rachel Cooke additionally referenced the revered Modernist writer, describing Garner’s assortment as “the greatest, richest journals by a writer since Virginia Woolf’s”.

This marks the primary main UK-based prize win for the Australian, who has been belatedly receiving consideration within the UK following the British publication of three of her books for the primary time final yr.

The Baillie Gifford Prize rewards the perfect of non-fiction and is open to authors of any nationality.

As the winner, Garner will obtain £50,000, with the opposite shortlisted authors every receiving £5,000, bringing the entire prize worth to £75,000.

The choice was comprised of over 350 books printed between 1 November 2024 and 31 October 2025.

The others who made the shortlist had been:

• The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the Nineteen Seventies by Jason Burke, a few group of extremists together with Carlos the Jackal and the Baader-Meinhof Gang.
• The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief by Richard Holmes, a biography in regards to the younger Alfred Lord Tennyson
• Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade within the Islamic World by Justin Marozzi, it covers slavery within the Islamic world from the seventh Century to the current day
• Lone Wolf: Walking the Faultlines of Europe by Adam Weymouth, this ebook follows a younger wolf’s 1000-mile trek throughout the European Alps
• Electric Spark by Frances Wilson, a biography of novelist Muriel Spark