Shirley Hazzard

Shirley Hazzard was born in Australia and from a young age traveled the world with her parents due to their diplomatic posts. At sixteen, while living in Hong Kong, she was recruited by the British Intelligence Service, for which she covered the Chinese Civil War in 1947-48. From then on, she lived in New Zealand and Europe; in the United States, where she worked with the United Nations Secretariat in New York; and in Italy. She married the writer Francis Steegmuller in 1963; he died in 1994. Author of several novels, short stories, and essays, she lives in New York, spending long periods in Italy.