About the author

Meet the author

DIANE WAS born in Poland and arrived in Australia in 1948.

At the age of seven she decided to become a writer. Her first article, about teaching at a Blackboard Jungle school in London, was published in The Australian Women’s Weekly in 1965. Diane subsequently became a freelance journalist, and over three thousand of her investigative articles, personal experience stories, profiles and travel stories have been published in newspapers and magazines such as Reader’s Digest, Vogue, The Bulletin, Harper’s Bazaar, The Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend and The Age. Her articles have also appeared in major publications in the UK, Canada, Poland, Hong Kong, Hungary, Holland and South Africa.

Over the years she has received numerous awards for journalism, including the Pluma de Plata awarded by the Government of Mexico for the best article written about that country, and the Gold Award given by the Pacific Asia Tourist Association. In 1993 she received an award for an investigative article about Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In 1998, she received the George Munster Award for Independent Journalism.

In 1998 her first book, Mosaic, a Chronicle of Five Generations was published by Random House with the help of a grant from the Australia Council. This memoir was nominated for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction as well as for the National Biography Award. In 2001 it was published in the United States and Canada by St Martin’s Press, and was selected as one of the year’s best memoirs by Amazon.com. In May 2009, Mosaic will be re-issued by HarperCollins.

In 2000 Diane received her second grant from the Australia Council. The Voyage of their Life, the Story of the SS Derna and its Passengers was published by HarperCollins, and was shortlisted in the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards.

Her first novel, Winter Journey, was published by HarperCollins in 2004 and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Literary Award. It has been published in Poland. In 2010 it will be published in Israel.

Diane is married to Sydney medico and photographer Michael Armstrong, has two children, Justine and Jonathan, and three grand-daughters, Sarah, Maya and Allie. She is a member of the Australian Society of Authors, the Society of Women Writers, the NSW Writers’ Centre and Sydney PEN International.

Diane Armstrong’s favourite ten books:

1. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

I love the vitality of Dickens’s characters and his brilliant plots. The irony at the heart of this novel about arrogance and self-deception is very powerful.

2. The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

This is a devastating description of life under the Soviet system, and has a masterly plot that leads to its inevitable conclusion.

3. If This is a Man by Primo Levi.

This is a stark memoir of the author’s experiences at Auschwitz and is told in spare, objective and compelling language.

4. The Long Voyage by Jorge Semprun.

I have been profoundly moved by this Spanish writer’s insights about the choices that we can make, even in extreme situations.

5. An Evil Cradling by Brian Keenan.

This is an inspiring memoir written by a man who was kidnapped and held captive by extremists in Lebanon, but who never lost his courage or humanity.

6. The Diaries of Anaïs Nin by Anaïs Nin.

I am beguiled by her lyrical writing and willingness to reveal herself.

7. The Roots of Heaven by Romain Gary.

This beautifully written novel about an idealist who tries to save the elephants of Africa from extinction resonated with me when I read it many years ago.

8. In My Father’s Court by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

These vignettes of life in the home of his father are written with Singer’s usual acerbic wit and probing insight into human nature.

9. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller.

A black satire about the American armed forces during World War II, this is a hilarious, original and also shocking look at war and those who find ways to profit from it. Joseph Heller has been one of my favourite writers ever since I read Catch-22, so when he offered to write a comment for the jacket of my first book, Mosaic, I couldn’t believe my good fortune.

10. A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch.

I think Iris Murdoch was one of the twentieth century’s best novelists and I was delighted by the unexpected twists and turns of this particular incisive novel of hers.