Biography

In 1973 she legally changed her surname to Clutha, after the river south of Oamaru, New Zealand, where she grew up as child, but continued to write under the name Janet Frame.

Her father worked on the railways and her mother was a failed poet.

Her brother had epilepsy and became an alcoholic.

She spent 7 years in a psychiatric institution where she underwent over 200 sessions of electro-convulsive therapy.

Was scheduled to have a lobotomy when her first volume of stories, The Lagoon, was published in 1952 - days before her operation. A nurse on staff successfuly challenged the operation despite Frame's own mother having approved it.