Lily Brett was born in Germany and immigrated to Melbourne, Australia with her parents in 1948. Her first book, The Auschwitz Poems, won the Victorian Premier’s Award for poetry in 1987. She has gone on to win several major prizes for her fiction and poetry. Her previous novel, Too Many Men, was an international bestseller. Lily Brett is the author of four novels, three books of essays and six volumes of poetry. She has lived in New York with her husband, the painter David Rankin, since 1989. They have three children.

Lily Brett on rivalry among women

Lily Brett has always been struck by the differences between men and women, and the effects of these differences are consistent themes in her books. In You Gotta Have Balls, Ruth Rothwax says, “Men are so smart. The average severely depressed, semi-witted, half-lobotomized man is so much smarter than most women.” Ruth doesn’t hold back on the subject. Men are clear-headed she says. Men know that’s it’s in their own interests to support each other even though they may hate the other man’s guts. Men don’t scratch and bitch and claw each other.

Ruth is dismayed about how aggressive and competitive women are with each other. Men have more straightforward relationships, she says. They don’t hang up phones in a huff with each other. They don’t feud and not speak for months over insignificant issues. Men don’t weep at something another man says. Or hate them for years because of it.

Lily Brett on being an expatriate Australian in New York:

There’s a very beautiful line by the poet Pablo Neruda that says, “It’s well known that he who returns has never left”. I think in some way, although you may leave a place physically, you haven’t really left. I think when you’ve lived somewhere for a long time as I have, it’s part of you. It’s part of your skin, part of your arteries. Everything that meant anything to me is still part of me.
From the transcript of an interview with Michael Maher for ABC Television, “Foreign Correspondent” 2006