Frame, Janet Paterson 1924-
New Zealand novelist and short-story writer

She was born in Dunedin, and educated at Otago University and Dunedin Teachers' Training College. Her first book was a collection of short stories, The Lagoon: Stories (1951), which she followed five years later with a novel, Owls Do Cry. She spent much time in psychiatric hospitals after severe mental breakdowns, and her novels describe an existence in which the looming threat of disorder both attracts and frightens. She was applauded in her homeland, but only belatedly received international recognition with her key books Scented Gardens for the Blind (1963), A State of Siege (1966), Intensive Care (1970) and Living in the Maniototo (1979). Her short stories have been collected in The Reservoir and Other Stories (1966) and You Are Now Entering the Human Heart (1983), and some early verse was published as The Pocket Mirror (1967). The background to her work is implicit in three volumes of autobiography, To the Is-land (1982), An Angel at my Table (1984, filmed, 1990) and The Envoy from Mirror City (1985). The Carpathians was published in 1988 and An Autobiography in 1990.