Janet Frame

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Janet Frame, ONZ CBE

Janet Frame is an internationally renowned author of both fiction and non-fiction. She overcame the challenges of a childhood marred by poverty, debt, illness and tragedy and later, eight years of hospitalisation (and a mistaken diagnosis of schizophrenia), to become one of New Zealand’s most celebrated authors. 

The Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship, the inaugural Turnovsky Prize for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts, four Goodman Fielder Wattie Awards and four New Zealand Book Awards, the inaugural Prime Minister’s Award for Achievement in Fiction and being twice short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Literature are just some of the many awards this luminous woman gained.

In this excerpt from Three New Zealanders: Janet Frame, she responds to the question “have you ever considered the proposition that you might be one of the great writers of the twentieth century?” with characteristic modesty.

Find out more about Janet Frame:

Watch the entire episode of Three New Zealanders: Janet Frame.

Read about Janet Frame at the New Zealand Book Council. 

Discover more about Frame – one of the Legends – on NZEdge. 

View Frame's profile on Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand.

See Janet Frame's profile on The Arts Foundation. 

Image: Screengrab Three New Zealanders: Janet Frame, courtesy John Barnett.