Education
Kent co-founded and served as deputy editor of Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings, and is completing her creative writing Doctor of Philosophy at Flinders University.
- Photos
- Works
- Photos
- Works
Hannah Kent
Edit ProfileCareer
The novel was published in May 2013 in Australia and the United Kingdom by Picador and in September 2013 in the United States and Canada by Little, Brown. Burial Rites tells the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, a servant in northern Iceland who was condemned to death after the murder of two men, one of whom was her employer, and became the last woman put to death in Iceland. Kent was drawn to the idea of writing her story after a visit to the scene of the woman"s execution in a lonely area of Iceland, close to where she stayed for some time as a Rotary student when she was 18.
The novel crafts a more ambiguous, sympathetic image of the life of a woman widely regarded in popular opinion to have been "an inhumane witch, stirring up murder".
Kent was included in the 2013 Waterstones 11 for her debut novel Burial Rites (2013), which revisits the true story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, the last person to be executed in Iceland. Burial Rites was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Baileys Women"s Prize for Fiction (2014).
Kent appeared at the 2013 Edinburgh International Book Festival, Sydney Writers" Festival and Byron Bay Writers Festival. A documentary about Kent"s experiences in Iceland and writing Burial Rites was aired on ABC1 as an episode of Australian Story titled "Number More Than a Ghost," on 1 July 2013.
Kent is presently engaged in writing a second novel placed in Ireland.
