Career
Born New South Wales, Australia, she trained for an acting career in Queensland, after a year with a theatre company in Sydney. Heyman spent a decade living in the United Kingdom, where she was first published. Heyman is the author of five novels: The Breaking (1997), Keep Your Hands on the Wheel (1999), The Accomplice (2003) Captain Starlight"s Apprentice (2006) and Floodline (2013).
She is also a playwright for theatre and radio and has held a number of creative writing fellowships in the United Kingdom and Australia.
Her short stories have appeared in a number of collections and also on radio. Heyman"s first novel, The Breaking, was longlisted for the Orange Prize, and shortlisted for the Scottish Writer of the Year Award.
The Accomplice is a fictional account of the wreck of the Dutch flagship the Batavia off the Australian coast in the 17th century. As a meditation on complicity with evil it has been compared with the work of Joseph Conrad and William Golding.
Her fourth novel, Captain Starlight"s Apprentice, features a woman bushranger, the birth (and near death) of the Australian film industry, and a British migrant to Australia who undergoes electroconvulsive therapy.
In 2007 the novel was shortlisted for the Nita Kibble Literary Award. Floodline, published 2013, is set during the aftermath of a great flood, and has been compared with the writing of Cormac McCarthy. Heyman"s writing has also been compared with that of Angela Carter, David Malouf, Peter Carey and Kate Grenville.
Heyman"s work has appeared on British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4, and a five-part dramatic adaptation of Captain Starlight"s Apprentice was broadcast on Woman"s Hour in April 2007.