Heather Rose (born 1964) is an Australian author born in Hobart, Tasmania. She is the author of the acclaimed memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here. She is best known for her novels The Museum of Modern Love, which won the 2017 Stella Prize, and Bruny (2019), which won Best General Fiction in the 2020 Australian Book Industry Awards. She has also worked in advertising, business, and the arts.
Early life and education
Heather Rose was born in Hobart, Tasmania in 1964. By the age of sixteen she had a weekly column in the Hobart Mercury, and in 1981 won the Tasmanian Short Story Prize. She left school in 1982 and travelled widely through Asia and Europe. Returning to Australia in 1986, Rose became an advertising copywriter in Melbourne, until she returned to Tasmania 10 years later. Her first novel White Heart was published in 1999. Apart from writing fiction, Rose has had an extensive career in advertising, business, and the arts.
Writing career
Memoir
Heather's most recent work is a memoir - Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here - published in November, 2022. It has been widely reviewed and is shortlisted for the Indie Book Awards 2023.
Novels
Four of Rose's adult novels have been set in Tasmania – Bruny, White Heart, The Butterfly Man, and The River Wife. The Museum of Modern Love is set in New York.
Rose's first adult novel, White Heart, was published in 1999 by Transworld. It tells the story of two children growing up in Tasmania. One of them becomes involved in the Native American ritual of sun dancing and the other becomes a Tasmanian tiger hunter. Murray Waldren in The Australian said: "Spirituality permeates Heather Rose's first novel, White Heart, as much as the past haunts it. This story is a complex of interwoven, sometimes chimeric themes...A-class debut."
Rose's second novel, The Butterfly Man, was published by UQP in 2005, It recounts the story of Lord Lucan the British Peer who disappeared from his family home in London after the murder of the family nanny in 1974. It is set in Hobart, Tasmania. The Butterfly Man won the Davitt Award for Crime Fiction Novel of the Year in 2006, was shortlisted for the Nita B Kibble Award, and longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2007.
The River Wife, Rose's third novel for adults, was published in 2009 by Allen & Unwin and described as "a beautiful, modern fable about the price we pay for love – a magical and original novel". It is set in the central highlands of Tasmania and has received significant acclaim from reviewers and readers where it has been hailed for the beauty of its storytelling. An abridged version of The River Wife was broadcast on Radio National in 2010.
Rose has said of her first three novels: "I am passionately Tasmanian and my family has lived here many generations. I think of this book (The River Wife) as the third in a trilogy of books that dives into the Tasmanian landscape. The first—White Heart—is a sweeping view of the island told through the lens of childhood. The second—The Butterfly Man—dives closer into the seasons and landscape of Mt Wellington, the mountain that is the backdrop to Hobart. And The River Wife dives even more deeply into the central highlands, the very heart of Tasmania, and finds there a story, a myth, a fable that is uniquely Tasmanian. Perhaps it is no surprise that is it also a love story.
Rose's fourth adult novel, The Museum of Modern Love, is set in New York and inspired by the work and life of performance artist Marina Abramović. It was published by Allen & Unwin in Australia in August 2016. The novel won the 2017 Stella Prize, the 2017 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards and the 2017 Margaret Scott Prize and the People's Choice Award in the Tasmanian Premier's Literary Prizes. It was shortlisted for the Australian Literary Society Gold Medal and the Queensland Premier's Prizes. It was also long listed for the 2018 International Dublin Literary Award. The Museum of Modern Love was launched in the United States at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, and has been translated into numerous languages. The Museum of Modern Love has been optioned for film by multi-award-winning production team GoodThing Productions.