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Australian author Helen Garner has won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction for her collected diaries, How to End a Story. In a speech live-streamed from her home in Melbourne, Garner said she was "staggered" to have won the prize, worth $AU100,000. "I never dreamt my book would win a prize of any kind because it seemed to fall between the cracks of the types of books people consider prize-worthy." Rachel Lloyd, deputy culture editor of The Economist and one of the judges, described the volume as "fascinating and compelling". "They're shimmering fragments, but together, they make a scintillating whole. She reflects on being a mother, being a wife, and above all, being a writer. You wouldn't think that diaries would be so readable and fluid, and yet Helen Garner has managed it."
