Glenda Adams - Life

Life

Adams was born in Ryde, a Sydney suburb, the younger of two children. She attended Fort Street Primary School for two years and Sydney Girls High School before going to the University of Sydney from which she graduated with an honours degree in Indonesian.

She was a cousin of Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, but held opposing political views and wanted to become a political journalist. She moved to New York City when she won a scholarship to study at Columbia University, Graduate School of Journalism and graduated in 1965. During this time, she met Gordon Adams, a political scientist at Columbia. They married in 1967 and had a daughter, Caitlin, before divorcing.

She worked as a lecturer at a number of tertiary institutions, including Columbia University, Sarah Lawrence College, before returning to Australia and the University of Technology, Sydney. Her subject was writing skills and creative writing. She helped design the master of arts writing program at the university, a program which became a model for postgraduate writing programs throughout Australia.

For the rest of her life, she travelled regularly between New York, to see her daughter and teach at Columbia, and Sydney.

On 13 July 2007, Jeremy Fisher, Executive Director of the Australian Society of Authors, announced that Glenda Adams had died two days previously in Sydney, following a battle with ovarian cancer. Her funeral was held on 18 July.