Hazel Joan Rowley was a British-born Australian author and biographer.

Born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, Rowley emigrated with her parents to Adelaide

Adelaide

Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...

 at the age of eight. She studied at the University of Adelaide

University of Adelaide

The University of Adelaide is a public university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third oldest university in Australia...

, graduating with Honours in French and German. Later she acquired a PhD in French. She taught literary studies at Deakin University

Deakin University

Deakin University is an Australian public university with nearly 40,000 higher education students in 2010. It receives more than A$600 million in operating revenue annually, and controls more than A$1.3 billion in assets. It received more than A$35 million in research income in 2009 and had 835...

 in Melbourne, before moving to the United States.

Rowley's first published biography, of Australian novelist Christina Stead

Christina Stead

Christina Stead was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations.-Biography:...

, was critically acclaimed and won the National Book Council's "Banjo" Award for non-fiction in 1994. Her next biographical work was about the African American writer Richard Wright

Richard Wright (author)

Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...

. Her best known book, Tête-à-tête

Tête-à-tête (book)

Tête-à-tête is a non-fiction book by Hazel Rowley about the lives of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.-Awards and nominations:In 2006, the editors of Lire magazine considered it one of the twenty best books written in French of that year....

(2005), covers the lives of Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir

Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...

 and Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...

 (de Beauvoir had been the subject of Rowley's PhD thesis). Her last published book is Franklin & Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage, about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was the First Lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945. She supported the New Deal policies of her husband, distant cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and became an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, Roosevelt continued to be an international...

 (2011).

Rowley suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in New York in February 2011 and died there on 1 March.

External links

• Official website
• Hazel Rowley 1951–2011, The Book Show (ABC Radio National)