Shirley Hazzard (30 January 1931 – 12 December 2016) was an Australian-American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She was born in Australia and also held U.S. citizenship. Hazzard's 1970 novel The Bay of Noon was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010; her 2003 novel The Great Fire won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction, the Miles Franklin Award and the William Dean Howells Medal. Hazzard also wrote nonfiction, including two books based on her experiences working at the United Nations Secretariat, which were highly critical of the organisation. Early life Hazzard was born in Sydney, the younger daughter of a Welsh father (Reginald Hazzard) and a Scottish mother (Catherine Stein Hazzard), both of whom immigrated to Australia in the 1920s and who met while they were working for the firm that built the Sydney Harbour Bridge. She attended Queenwood School for Girls in Mosman, New South Wales, but left in 1947 when her father became a diplomat and was posted to Hong Kong. Hazzard's parents had intended for her to study at the university there, but it had been destroyed in the war. Instead, at age 16, she began working for the British Combined Intelligence Services, until she was "brutally removed by destiny" – first to Australia, as her sister was ill, and then to New Zealand, when her father became Australian Trade Commissioner there. She said of her experience of the East that "I began to feel that people could enjoy life, should enjoy life". At age 20, in 1951, Hazzard and her family moved to New York City and she worked at the United Nations Secretariat as a typist for about 10 years. In 1956, she was posted to Naples for a year and began to explore Italy; she visited annually for several years afterward. Writing Hazzard wrote her first short story, "Woollahra Road", in 1960 while in Siena, and it was accepted and published by The New Yorker magazine the next year. She resigned from her position at the United Nations and began writing full time. Her first book, Cliffs of Fall, published in 1963, was a collection of stories that had previously appeared in the magazine. Her first novel, The Evening of the Holiday, was published in 1966. Her second, The Bay of Noon, appeared in 1970, and follows British people in Italy shortly after World War II. The Guardian has