Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks is author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning and internationally best-selling novel March, a retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s beloved classic Little Women from the point of view of Mr. March, the absent father who goes off to war. Her first novel, Year of Wonders, published in 2001, is also an international bestseller. Set in 1666, Year of Wonders follows a young woman’s battle to save her family and her soul when the plague suddenly strikes the small Derbyshire village of Eyam.

Her most recent bestseller, People of the Book, is an intricate, ambitious novel that traces the journey of a rare illuminated Hebrew manuscript from convivencia Spain to the ruins of Sarajevo, from the Silver Age of Venice to the sunburned rock faces of northern Australia. Inspired by the true story of a mysterious codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah, People of the Book is a sweeping adventure through five centuries of history.

Brooks is the author of Foreign Correspondence, a travel and adventure memoir which chronicles a childhood enriched by penpals from around the world, and her adult quest to find them. Foreign Correspondence won the Nita B. Kibble Award for women’s writing. Her first book of non-fiction, Nine Parts of Desire, was based on her experiences among the Muslim women of the Middle East, and is an international bestseller that has been translated into seventeen languages.

Brooks grew up in Australia. She attended Sydney University and worked as a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald. As the Greg Shackleton Memorial Scholar, she completed a Master's Degree in journalism at Columbia University in New York City. Subsequently, Brooks worked for The Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. In 1990, Brooks (with Tony Horwitz) received the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for Best Newspaper or Wire Service Reporting from Abroad for coverage of the Persian Gulf.