Hannah Kent
Hannah Kent (born 1985) is an Australian writer, known for two novels – Burial Rites (2013) and The Good People (2016). Her third novel, Devotion, was published in 2021. Early life and education Kent was born in 1985 grew up in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia. She attended Heathfield High School in Heathfield. She earned a PhD in creative writing at Flinders University, her thesis being the basis of her first novel, Burial Rites. Career Kill Your Darlings In 2010, Kent co-founded the Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings with Rebecca Starford. Novels In 2011 Kent won the inaugural Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award for her novel Burial Rites. Burial Rites tells the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir, a servant in northern Iceland who was condemned to death after the murder of two men, one of whom was her employer, and became the last woman put to death in Iceland. Kent was drawn to the idea of writing her story after a visit to the scene of the woman's execution at Þrístapar, close to where she stayed for some time as a Rotary exchange student when she was 18. The novel crafts a more ambiguous, sympathetic image of the life