Helen Garner is one of Australia’s most admired writers of novels, short stories, screenplays, essays and non-fiction in a career spanning more than 50 years. In her non-fiction, she writes with a tough and unsparing honesty about both her subjects and herself. In this podcast from the 2018 Sydney Writers' Festival, the author, described by The New Yorker as “a recording angel at life’s secular apocalypses”, speaks to Matthew Condon about the power of reflection and self-scrutiny, and considers just how impartially writers can observe themselves and others.

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