Brenda Niall
Brenda Niall is one of Australia’s foremost biographers. She is the author of several award-winning biographies, including her acclaimed accounts of the Boyd family and her portrait of the Durack sisters, True North. In 2016 she won the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal and the National Biography Award for Mannix. In 2004 she was awarded the Order of Australia for ‘services to Australian literature, as an academic, biographer and literary critic’.
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Ruth Wilson
Ruth Wilson read her first Jane Austen novel in 1947. In 2021, at the age of eighty-eight, she graduated from The University of Sydney with a PhD that suggests a new approach to reading literary fiction at school.
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She encourages her four children, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren to read widely, wisely and well. She and her husband are LATs, a married couple who live apart together. -
George Eliot
Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.
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Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people" and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as t -
Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970 and later received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia.
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McEwan's works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories First Love, Last Rites; the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for The Child in Time; and Germany's Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for Amsterdam in 1998. His novel Atonement received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times P -
Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins was an English novelist and playwright, best known for The Woman in White (1860), an early sensation novel, and The Moonstone (1868), a pioneering work of detective fiction. Born to landscape painter William Collins and Harriet Geddes, he spent part of his childhood in Italy and France, learning both languages. Initially working as a tea merchant, he later studied law, though he never practiced. His literary career began with Antonina (1850), and a meeting with Charles Dickens in 1851 proved pivotal. The two became close friends and collaborators, with Collins contributing to Dickens' journals and co-writing dramatic works.
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Collins' success peaked in the 1860s with novels that combined suspense with social critique, includin -
Kate Atkinson
Kate Atkinson was born in York and now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and she has been a critically acclaimed international bestselling author ever since.
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She is the author of a collection of short stories, Not the End of the World, and of the critically acclaimed novels Human Croquet, Emotionally Weird, Case Histories, and One Good Turn.
Case Histories introduced her readers to Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, and won the Saltire Book of the Year Award and the Prix Westminster.
When Will There Be Good News? was voted Richard & Judy Book Best Read of the Year. After Case Histories and One Good Turn, it was her third novel to fea -
Sally Morgan
Sally Morgan is recognised as one of Australia's best known Aboriginal artists and writers. She is one of a number of successful urban Aboriginal artists.
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Sally was born in Perth in 1951, the eldest of five children. As a child she found school difficult because of questions from other students about her appearance and family background. She understood from her mother that she and her family were from India. However, when Sally was fifteen she learnt that she and her sister were in fact of Aboriginal descent, from the Palku people of the Pilbara.
This experience of her hidden origins, and subsequent quest for identity, was the stimulus for her first book My Place published in 1987. It tells the story of her self discovery through reconnectio -
Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout is the author of several novels, including: Abide with Me, a national bestseller and BookSense pick, and Amy and Isabelle, which won the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England. In 2009 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her book Olive Kitteridge. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker. She teaches at the Master of Fine Arts program at Queens University of Charlotte.
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Tony Birch
Tony Birch is the author of Ghost River, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing and Blood, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. He is also the author of Shadowboxing and three short story collections, Father’s Day, The Promise and Common People. In 2017 he was awarded the Patrick White Literary Award. Tony is a frequent contributor to ABC local and national radio and a regular guest at writers’ festivals. He lives in Melbourne and is a Senior Research Fellow at Victoria University.
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Kate Grenville
Kate Grenville is one of Australia's best-known authors. She's published eight books of fiction and four books about the writing process. Her best-known works are the international best-seller The Secret River, The Idea of Perfection, The Lieutenant and Lilian's Story (details about all Kate Grenville's books are elsewhere on this site). Her novels have won many awards both in Australia and the UK, several have been made into major feature films, and all have been translated into European and Asian languages.
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Anna Funder
Anna Funder was born in Melbourne in 1966. She has worked as an international lawyer and a radio and television producer. Her book Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, won the 2004 Samuel Johnson Prize. She lives in Sydney with her husband and family.
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Craig Silvey
Craig Silvey is an author and screenwriter from Fremantle, Western Australia.
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His critically acclaimed debut novel, Rhubarb, was published in 2004. His bestselling second novel, Jasper Jones, was released in 2009 and is considered a modern Australian classic. Published in over a dozen territories, Jasper Jones has won plaudits in three continents, including an International Dublin Literary Award shortlisting, a Michael J. Printz Award Honor, and a Miles Franklin Literary Award shortlisting. Jasper Jones was the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year for 2010.
His third novel, Honeybee, published in 2020, was an award-winning bestseller. Honeybee was the 2020 Dymocks Book Of The Year, won the Indie Book Award for Best Fiction, and wa -
Margaret Hickey
Margaret Hickey is an award-winning author and playwright from North East Victoria. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and is deeply interested in rural lives and communities. She is the author of Cutters End and Stone Town.
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Amanda Lohrey
Amanda Lohrey is a novelist and essayist. She was educated at the University of Tasmania and Cambridge. She lectured in Writing and Textual Studies at the Sydney University of Technology (1988-1994), and since 2002 at the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland in Brisbane.
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Mary Durack
Dame Mary Durack was an Australian author and historian. The Durack family were pioneers in the settlement of Australia by Europeans. The story of her family's history, beginning with the mid-19th century migration from Ireland, is presented by Durack in Kings in Grass Castles, and its sequel, Sons in the Saddle.
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Durack married the aviator, Captain Horrie C. Miller, and had two sons and four daughters. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1977 for her services to literature. -
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín FRSL, is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and poet. Tóibín is currently Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University in Manhattan and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester.
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Niki Savva
Niki Savva is an Australian journalist, known for her political 'insider' books. Born in Cyprus before emigrating with her family as a child, she became a cadet journalist in 1969, while still in her teens. Savva served as political correspondent for The Australian, she led the Canberra bureau of The Herald Sun and then The Age. In 1997 she moved into politics, working for a decade for Liberal Party Treasurer Peter Costello and Prime Minister John Howard.
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Since 2008, Savva has returned to journalism as a columnist for print and television media, presenting insider knowledge of Australia's conservative politics but from a centrist, sometimes progressive, point-of-view. From 2016 to 2025, Savva wrote a series of four insider books on three con -
Chris Hammer
Chris Hammer is a leading Australian crime fiction author. His first book, Scrublands, was an instant #1 bestseller upon publication in 2018. It won the prestigious UK Crime Writers' Association John Creasey New Blood Dagger and was shortlisted for awards in Australia and the United States.
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Scrublands has been sold into translation in several foreign languages. Chris's follow-up books—Silver (2019), Trust (2020), Treasure & Dirt (2021), The Tilt (2022) and The Seven (2023)—are also bestsellers and all have been shortlisted for major literary prizes. The Valley is his seventh novel.
The Tilt (published as Dead Man's Creek in the UK) was named The Sunday Times Crime Book of the Year for 2023.
Scrublands has been adapted for television, screening -
Sophie Green
Sophie Green is an author and publisher who lives in Sydney. In her spare time she writes about country music on her website, Sunburnt Country Music.
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Sophie's debut novel, THE INAUGURAL MEETING OF THE FAIRVALE LADIES BOOK CLUB, was a Top Ten bestseller and was shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards for General Fiction Book of the Year 2018, and longlisted for both the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year 2018 and the Indie Book Award for Debut Fiction 2018.
Sophie Green is internationally published and THE SHELLY BAY LADIES SWIMMING CIRCLE, THURSDAYS AT ORANGE BLOSSOM HOUSE, THE BELLBIRD RIVER COUNTRY CHOIR and WEEKENDS WITH THE SUNSHINE GARDENING SOCIETY were also Top Ten bestsellers. -
Sally Hepworth
Sally Hepworth is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, most recently Darling Girls. Sally’s novels have been called “darkly charming” and praised by authors Emily Giffin and Liane Moriarty as “totally absorbing” and “fiction at its finest.”
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Sally's novels are available around the globe in English and have been translated into over 30 languages. She has sold over two million books worldwide.
Sally lives in Melbourne, Australia with her family. -
Pip Williams
Pip was born in London, grew up in Sydney and now calls the Adelaide Hills home. She is co-author of the book Time Bomb: Work Rest and Play in Australia Today (New South Press, 2012) and in 2017 she wrote One Italian Summer, a memoir of her family’s travels in search of the good life, which was published with Affirm Press to wide acclaim. Pip has also published travel articles, book reviews, flash fiction and poetry.
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Dervla McTiernan
Number one internationally bestselling author Dervla McTiernan is the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of six novels, including the much-loved Cormac Reilly series and two number 1 bestselling standalone thrillers, The Murder Rule and What Happened to Nina?, both New York Times Best Thrillers of the Year and both currently in development for screen adaptation. Dervla is also the author of four novellas, and her audio novella, The Sisters, was a four-week number one bestseller in the United States. Before turning her hand to writing, Dervla spent twelve years working as a lawyer in her home country of Ireland. Following the global financial crisis, she relocated to Western Australia where she now lives with her husband, two chil
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Sarah Haywood
Sarah Haywood was born in Birmingham. After studying Law, she worked in London and Birkenhead as a solicitor, in Toxteth as an advice worker, and in Manchester as an investigator of complaints about lawyers. She now lives in Liverpool with her husband and two sons.
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Charlotte Wood
Charlotte Wood is the author of six novels and two books of non-fiction. Her new novel is The Weekend.
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Her previous novel, The Natural Way of Things, won the 2016 Stella Prize, the 2016 Indie Book of the Year and Novel of the Year, was joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Fiction.
Her non-fiction works include The Writer’s Room, a collection of interviews with authors about the creative process, and Love & Hunger, a book about cooking. Her features and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Literary Hub, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Saturday Paper among other publications. In 2019 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant services to literature, and was named one of the Aus