BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

An Australian outback childhood, free of the dumbing effect of television, has been my chief inspiration and education. I have worked as a singer, shuffled film crews on the production side of television news in New Zealand, studied French in New Caledonia and travelled in South Africa, Namibia, The West Indies, England, Ireland and Chile.

I have written for glossy lifestyle magazines, worked as a paintress in a pottery, a barmaid, and backing singer with a Pink Floyd tribute band. My short fiction and non-fiction has appeared in a range of publications, including anthologies by Wakefield Press and Granta.

I hold an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing from the Univesity of Adelaide. Whatever I happen to be working at, my real job is always writing.

My first novel Nights In The Asylum was published by Vintage (Australia) and Picador UK in 2007. It was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, won the 2008 Nita B. Kibble Award for Women Writers and the 2009 Peoples' Choice Award. If You Were Mine was published by Vintage in 2008.

I live between the Isle of Man and Adelaide in South Australia and am at work on a new novel.