Antonella Gambotto-Burke
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Antonella Gambotto-Burke (née Antonella Gambotto, born September 19, 1965) is an Australian author and journalist.
Gambotto-Burke has written one novel, The Pure Weight of the Heart, two anthologies, Lunch of Blood and An Instinct for the Kill, and a memoir, The Eclipse, which has been published in three languages and is due to be published in a fourth in 2008. The Eclipse concerns her brother's suicide and her engagement to, and the death of, the late GQ editor Michael VerMeulen. Her best known comic interview - with Warwick Capper, a retired Australian footballer, and his wife - is included in The Best Australian Profiles (Black, 2004). "The best profiles lodge deep in the public mind, such as ... Antonella Gambotto's cheerfully dopey Warwick and Joanne Capper, which presaged by years the arrival of Kath & Kim", wrote a critic in The Age on June 18, 2005.
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[edit] Biography
Gambotto-Burke was born and raised on Sydney's North Shore, the first child and only daughter of Giancarlo Gambotto (whose lawsuit against WCP Ltd. changed Australian corporate law, made the front pages of The Australian Financial Review and The Australian, and is still featured in corporate law exams).
She was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald at the age of fifteen - a satire of poet Les Murray's "An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow", later included in Michele Field's anthology Shrinklit (1983) - and in The Australian at the age of eighteen. Her first short story was published in literary magazine Billy Blue in July, 1982.
In 1984, she moved to London, where she was employed as a music critic by NME. Her review of Cliff Richard's concert inspired him to sue the music journal. She also wrote "A Man Called Horse", the ZigZag cover story of alternative rock star Nick Cave, in which she documented his heroin-induced stupor (in retaliation, he wrote a song about her and British journalist Mat Snow entitled "Scum", which Gambotto-Burke wrote about most recently in the September 2006 issue of Men's Style Australia magazine). The Cave interview, and the story behind it, are also included in her book Lunch of Blood.
Gambotto-Burke won UK Cosmopolitan magazine's New Journalist of the Year Award in 1988. That same year, she became engaged to the UK GQ editor Michael VerMeulen, who died from a cocaine overdose at the age of 38 in 1995. Before leaving London, she wrote for The Independent on Sunday, notably a cover story on cardiothoracic surgeons ("Affairs of the Heart", March 17, 1991).
In 1989, she returned to Sydney, where she resumed contributing to The Weekend Australian as a feature profile writer and senior literary critic, and began writing for The South China Morning Post, The Globe and Mail in Canada, Harper's Bazaar, Men's Style, and other international publications.
On June 19, 2004, The Sydney Morning Herald named her as a high-profile member of Mensa International.
After her brother committed suicide in 2001, she relocated to Byron Bay, the renowned countercultural haven, where she began practicing Astanga yoga and wrote The Eclipse. In a November 2003 interview with Yoga Magazine UK, she said: "I wanted to explain depression as a valid emotional response rather than as a disease ... I am not ashamed of my brother, and I do not see death as tragic - deliberate ignorance and fear are tragedies, not death."
She returned to Sydney in 2004. She is now also a regular contributor to My Child magazine. Her column concerns life with her husband, Alexander Gambotto-Burke, a columnist for The Guardian in London and IT writer, and their daughter, born December 2005.
Gambotto-Burke was commissioned to write the core love stories of artist David Bromley's upcoming film, I Could Be Me (narrated by Hugo Weaving). Her essay, "The Language of the Dead", will appear in "Some Girls Do ... My Life As A Teenager", the charity anthology edited by Jacinta Tynan to be published by Allen & Unwin in April, 2007.
[edit] Bibliography
- Lunch of Blood (Random House, 1994)
- An Instinct for the Kill (HarperCollins, 1997)
- The Pure Weight of the Heart (Orion, 1999)
- The Eclipse (Broken Ankle Books, 2004)
[edit] Film
- I Could Be Me, directed by artist David Bromley (2007)
[edit] Television
Gambotto-Burke has appeared on programs such as Beauty & The Beast (Channel Ten, Foxtel), The Midday Show (Channel 9), Meet the Press (SBS), and has performed cameos on Paul Fenech's SBS sitcom Pizza.
