Bio

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Photo by Niki Bern

I am an Australian-American author of eight novels. My most recent, My Sister Rosa, is about a seventeen-year-old boy whose ten-year-old sister is a psychopath. It is published by Allen and Unwin in Australia and New Zealand and by Soho Press in North America. My previous novel is Razorhurst, which takes place on a winter’s day in 1932 when Dymphna Campbell, a gangster’s moll, and Kelpie, a street urchin who can see ghosts, meet over the dead body of Dymphna’s latest lover, Jimmy Palmer.

My most popular novel, Liar, is kind of self explanatory, i.e. it’s about a liar. I edited Zombies versus Unicorns with Holly Black. My other novels include How to Ditch Your Fairy and the Magic or Madness trilogy.

In another life I was an academic and edited a scholarly collection of feminist science fiction in the twentieth century, Daughters of Earth and wrote a scholary tome, The Battle of The Sexes in Science Fiction.

Portrait by Patrick Thicklin

Portrait by Patrick Thicklin

I’ve written a short film about the legend of King Midas, as well as essays on American science fiction culture in the 1940s and 1950s, with detours into Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the occasional short story. I co-wrote a radio show about relationship breakups with Ellen Kushner.

I am a Sydney girl. Though I have lived in other parts of Australia, courtesy of my anthropologist parents, including Newcastle, Canberra, and two small Aboriginal settlements in the Northern Territory. I now mostly live in New York City with occasional returns to Sydney.

To find out more about me and my thoughts about life, the universe, food, television, sport and anything else that crosses my mind you can read these interviews or have a squizz at my faq. I also have a frequently updated twitter feed and a blog.