Shelley Gare is a Walkley award-winning Australian freelance journalist, editor and author
Background
Gare was born Helen Shelley Gare in Carnarvon, Western Australia in 1952, the fourth and youngest child of public servant Frank Ellis Gare (Commissioner for Native Welfare for the State of Western Australia) and artist and novelist Nene Gare.
Education
Her family moved from Carnarvon to Geraldton then to Perth with her father"s employment and Shelley was educated in Perth then trained as a cadet journalist on The Daily News there.
Career
She has held some of Australia"s most senior magazine editor positions including editor of both Good Weekend and Sunday Life. Her brother is Arran Gare, metaphysician and environmental philosopher. She moved to Sydney and in her early 20s and became editor of Cleo magazine.
She moved to London to work for Australian Consolidated Press"s Fleet Street bureau, then as deputy editor on Company magazine and finally as deputy editor on the Look section of The Sunday Times, returning to Australia in 1986, where, after working as an assistant editor on The Herald in Melbourne, and then as editor of Good Weekend, she eventually became the first woman deputy editor appointed to The Australian newspaper.
Gare was responsible for all newspaper features. She was also a consultant editor on the start-up of World Health Organization magazine.
She is now a freelance journalist and regular contributor to a variety of publications. Her 2006 book The Triumph of the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense excoriated the shallowness of the contemporary press and general culture, with their emphasis on lifestyle supplements in preference to hard news and serious argument.
In 2012 she became a Contributing Editor with the Australian Financial Review.