“The Girls” on the National Biography Award shortlist

Pan Macmillan Australia are delighted to congratulate Chloe Higgins on making the National Biography Award shortlist for 2020 for her debut The Girls.

Chloe Higgins writes about the things we’re all afraid of: death, sex, love, and how we feel about our mothers. The Director of Wollongong Writers Festival, a casual lecturer and tutor in creative writing at the University of Wollongong where she is completing a PhD, and a member of the Finishing School Collective — Chloe is an accomplished young writer.

In 2005, Chloe Higgins was seventeen years old. She and her mother, Rhonda, stayed home so that she could revise for her exams while her two younger sisters Carlie and Lisa went skiing with their father. On the way back from their trip, their car veered off the highway, flipped on its side and burst into flames. Both her sisters were killed. Their father walked away from the accident with only minor injuries.

In The Girls, Chloe describes the heartbreaking aftermath of that one terrible day. It is a story of grieving, and learning to leave grief behind, for anyone who has ever loved, and lost.

Congratulations Chloe! The full shortlist can be found at the State Library of NSW website. The winner will be announced on 28 August 2020.