in full Janet Paterson Frame Clutha
born Aug. 28, 1924, Dunedin, N.Z.
New Zealand novelist, short-story writer, and poet.
After an impoverished childhood, she trained as a teacher. Her first book was the story collection The Lagoon (1951). Several times committed to mental institutions, she narrowly escaped undergoing a frontal lobotomy. Her novel Owls Do Cry (1957) incorporated poetry and prose in its investigation of the border between sanity and madness. Her many other novels, several of which draw on Maori legends, include Scented Gardens for the Blind (1963) and The Carpathians (1988). One of her three volumes of memoirs, An Angel at My Table (1984), was filmed by Jane Campion .