Background

Sue Woolfe was born on November 15, 1950, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Education

Sue Woolfe studied at the University of Sydney and the University of New England.

Career

Sue Woolfe has been engaged in writing and teaching during her professional career. Until recently she taught creative writing at the University of Sydney. Since January 2012, she has taught creativity and narration at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). She also takes retreats overseas teaching her unique method of how to create inspired stories by combining a successful author's practical know-how with what cognitive science reveals about creative thinking. She worked as a secondary school teacher and tutor in Sydney. Woolfe was director and producer during her years with SBS television. In 1996 she also was a writer-in-residence at Rollins College, Florida.

Woolfe's first book, Language in Literature, was published in 1975. Since that time, she has written a lot of books, including the most popular Painted Woman (1989), The Secret Cure (2003), The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady: A Writer Looks at Creativity and Neuroscience (2007) and The Oldest Song in the World (2012). An award-winning Leaning Towards Infinity: How My Mother's Apron Unfolds into My Life (1996) deals with a mother-daughter relationship and the conflict between motherhood and career. Leaning Towards Infinity and Painted Woman were adopted for ABC radio and the professional stage. Also, Leaning Towards Infinity was optioned for a film in the United States. Her third novel, The Secret Cure, was adapted for an opera.

Her work also includes a collection of short stories, Do You Love Me or What? (2017). With Kate Grenville, she co-authored Making Stories: How Ten Australian Novels Were Written in 1993. The author also published many short stories, written textbooks for secondary schools and made documentary films as well.

Achievements

• Sue Woolfe is a prolific award-winning author. Her awards include the 1989 ABC Bicentennial Literary Award for Painted Woman, 1996 New South Wales Premier's Literary Award, 1996 Christina Stead Prize for fiction for Leaning Towards Infinity and 1997 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book, also for Leaning Towards Infinity.
  
  The book Leaning Towards Infinity was a best seller in Woolfe's native Australia, was shortlisted for the Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction in 1996 and for the TipTree Prize in the United States. It was shortlisted for almost every major Australian prize. The book was translated into French, Italian and Dutch, and, in 1999, was named in Australia as one of the most important books of the century. Woolfe was also awarded for her TV scripts for children.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady: A Writer Looks at Creativity and Neuroscience

    (In The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady, Sue Woolfe tracks th...)

    2007
  • Painted Woman

    (Painted Woman is a totally engrossing story of the evolut...)

    1989
  • The Oldest Song in the World

    (Kate is an outsider and way out of her depth in the deser...)

    2012
  • Leaning Towards Infinity: How My Mother's Apron Unfolds into My Life

    (In Leaning Towards Infinity, the narrator, an Australian ...)

    1996
  • The Secret Cure

    (This is the story of Eva, the cleaning lady in a small Au...)

    2003
  • Do You Love Me or What?

    (A woman risks everything for a dangerous friendship. Shyn...)

    2017
  • Language in Literature 1975
  • About Literature 1984

Interests

• dancing