Lian Hearn Biography

Lian Hearn is a pseudonym for Gillian Rubinstein, a well-known Australian writer of children's books and plays. She chose not to publish Tales of the Otori, (the series originally consisted of three books but she later added two more books) under her own name so as to have her first adult book judged in its own right and not compared to her previous writing for children. She chose her name by combining her childhood nickname (the last letters of Gillian) and the surname of Lafcadio Hearn, an Irish writer who lived in Japan at the end of the 19th century.

In June 2002, some time after the book had been sold on its own merits to publishers in multiple countries, and optioned for film writes, Rubinstein admitted that she was the author, saying "I think there is a strong tendency among the spectators or the readers of culture to pigeonhole people, and that's the thing that artists hate having done to them. They want to be free to do whatever seems to be the right thing at the time."

Rubenstein was born in England, grew up in the countryside and divided her teenage years between her mother and her stepfather's home in Nigeria, a remote English village and boarding school. She studied languages at Oxford University, traveled in Europe and worked in London, as an editor, freelance journalist, script assessor and film critic. She emigrated to Australia in 1973. Rubinstein has had a long-standing interest in Asia and returned to Japan in 1999 on a residency to work on what would become Tales of the Otori.

Lian Hearn's website

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