Laura Elizabeth Woollett

Laura Elizabeth Woollett approaches Australian fiction as a Melbourne novelist, critic, and writer of short stories. Her work often considers historical violence through people drawn toward charismatic figures and destructive groups. Beautiful Revolutionary, published by Scribe in 2018, imagines the inner life of Peoples Temple in 1960s California through several perspectives, including a young couple who enter Jim Jones’s movement. The novel followed The Love of a Bad Man, Woollett’s story collection about women connected to notorious men, and preceded The Newcomer and West Girls. Prime Minister’s Literary Award judges shortlisted Beautiful Revolutionary for fiction, as did the Australian Book Industry Awards. Woollett avoids reducing followers to a single motive, instead examining idealism, ambition, loyalty, and manipulation within a collective. Her careful shifting of viewpoint makes the novel both a study of political faith and an account of relationships altered by institutional control.