About

I’m a Sydney writer and journalist.

I’ve written nine novels, seven for young people and two for adults. Four of them have been translated into Italian, Danish, Dutch and Thai. I’ve also worked as a newspaper journalist on publications including The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald, Sydney.

My first book for adults, Born into the Country, was shortlisted and published after entry into South Africa’s AA Mutual Life Vita Young Writers’ Award. One of my YA books, The Wishing Moon, was shortlisted for the Australian Multicultural Children’s Award and was a Children’s Book Council Notable book.

Penguin Australia published my young adult dystopian novel, Days Like This, in August 2010. It was a finalist in the 2010 YA Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

My current project,  Cold Stone Soup, is a memoir about growing up in apartheid-era South Africa. It has recently won the Fellowship of Australian Writers 2013 National Literary Awards Jim Hamilton Award for a non-fiction manuscript. It was also a Varuna Writers’ House Scholarship runner-up.

I also write travel stories, mostly for Fairfax Media’s Sydney Morning Herald Traveller/Melbourne Age Traveller and associated Fairfax newspapers.