Helen Garner’s ‘unsparing’ diary collection becomes first to win prestigious Baillie Gifford non-fiction prize
A writer, whose “candid” and “unsparing” diaries have become the first to ever win the prestigious Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. has told Sky News she is “delighted” to see the literary format recognised rather than dismissed.
Helen Garner, an acclaimed Australian author and diarist whose celebrity fans include singer Dua Lipa and fellow writer David Nicholls, said that diaries, often written by women, tended to be given “short shrift” in the literary industry.
She has now won the Baillie Gifford award for How To End A Story, a collection which charts 20 years of her life, from publishing her debut novel while raising a young daughter in the 1970s to the disintegration of her marriage in the 1990s.
Garner accepted the award via video link from Australia. Pic: Baillie Gifford Prize
Judges hailed her as a “brilliant observer and listener” and described the diaries as a “recklessly candid, unsparing, occasionally eye-popping account of the implosion of a marriage”.
Speaking to Sky News’ Sophy Ridge and Wilfred Frost on the new Mornings with Ridge and Frost programme, Garner, 82, said: “My main reason to be delighted is that I think diaries have been given short shrift in literature. I think they are literature.
“Because they were often written by women, they used to be dismissed as just sort of verbal sludge that people… sort of lazily wrote down, but in actual fact to keep a decent diary involves as much hard work as writing a full-on book – in my experience, anyway. So I’m really glad that it’s been recognised.”
Garner was named winner of the £50,000 prize at a ceremony in London on Tuesday, and accepted her award via video link from Melbourne, Australia.
Journalist Robbie Millen, who chaired the prize jury, said her “addictive” book was the unanimous choice of the six judges.
“Garner takes the diary form, mixing the intimate, the intellectual, and the everyday, to new heights,” he said, comparing her to Virginia Woolf in the canon of great literary diarists. “There are places it’s toe-curlingly embarrassing. She puts it all out there.”
How To End A Story was the judge’s unanimous choice. Pic: Baillie Gifford Prize
‘The mess my life became is not unique’
Garner, who has published novels, short stories, screenplays and true crime books, told Sky News she has been surprised to hear from so many readers who have related to her words and most intimate thoughts.
“People have said to me, ‘this could be my marriage’,” she said. “I found that rather shocking because it’s quite a painful story of a marriage collapsing, starting off with love, but then developing over the years into something painful and destructive.
“I’ve been glad to find that I’m not unique in that way, that the mess that I made in my life, the mess that my life became, it’s not unique. In fact, it’s archetypal. It’s something that’s happened to gazillions of people in the history of the world.”
Asked by Ridge if the book would have been a “difficult read” for her ex-husband, Garner replied: “I don’t know, I haven’t spoken to him for approximately 25 years. We won’t be speaking to each other again, I imagine. And if you’ve read the diary, you’ll see why.”
How To End A Story is the first set of diaries to win the Baillie Gifford Prize, which was founded in 1999 and recognises English-language books in current affairs, history, politics, science, sport, travel, biography, autobiography and the arts.
It was selected from more than 350 books published between 1 November 2024 and 31 October 2025.
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