Authors: D

Andrew Daddo
Andrew Daddo is one of the sharpest new voices for many years in Australian writing for young people. In his chapter books for younger readers, Writing in Wet Cement, Creepy Cool, Andrew shows that he is a born storyteller. In Sprung Again! and now You're Dropped Fergus Kipper is back and he's growing up. When he's not writing or playing with his children, Andrew is one of Australia's most popular television personalities, currently appearing as one of the team on The Great Outdoors with Earnie Dingo.

Emma Darcy
Emma Darcy’s life journey has taken as many twists and turns as those of the characters in her stories whose international popularity has resulted in over sixty million sales from her books.

Over the past 20 years she has written 85 books for Harlequin Presents, the premiere category romance line worldwide, appearing regularly on the Waldenbooks Best Seller List in the U.S.A., and in the Nielsen BookScan Top 100 chart in the U.K. In 1997 her first mainstream book, The Secrets Within, was published by MIRA publications in the U.S. and subsequently in other countries around the world.

In 1999 Emma Darcy conceived the idea of a murder mystery series based more on relationships than the current proliferation of forensic thrillers. The first book, Who Killed Angelique?, published by Pan Macmillan Australia in 2001, won the Ned Kelly Award for the Best First Crime Fiction Book of the year, and will be published in Croatia in 2004. The second, Who Killed Bianca?, was published in 2002 and will be published in Japan in 2004. Emma's third book, Who Killed Camilla?, was published in 2003.

Jenny Davis
Jenny grew up in Surrey, England, and emigrated to Perth in 1976. She is well known in Western Australia as an actress, and has worked extensively on stage over the past twenty years. Her book, Dear Heart, was staged as a play to wide acclaim in Perth and Sydney in 1995.

Susanna De Vries
Susanna De Vries lectures at the University of Queensland Continuing Education Department and to women's groups. Her father was a well-known Anglo-Irish writer and BBC broadcaster. She studied art history and history at the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Madrid and has worked in various European cities. Susanna arrived in Brisbane in 1975 with her former husband, a professor at the University of Queensland. In 1980 they moved to Sydney and Susanna became Head of Rare Books and Australiana of a leading Art Auctioneer. She edited The Australian Connoisseur and Collector magazine before returning to Brisbane where her marriage broke down. Two years later she married Jake de Vries, City Architect of Brisbane and a keen photographer, with whom she has worked on a range of art and history books.

Susanna's biography of Australia's most decorated woman, Blue Ribbons, Bitter Bread - The Life of Joice NanKivell Loch won Ireland's Sligo Non-Fiction prize and was short-listed for the Queensland Premier's Award for Non-Fiction. Susanna was made a member of the Order of Australia in 1996 'for services to art and literature'. In 2001 she was awarded a Tyrone Guthrie Fellowship by the Literature Board of the Australia Council. In 2004 HarperCollins published Susanna's inspiring book, Heroic Australian Women in War and Pandanus Press/Tower Books of Sydney published the third and updated edition of her award-winning biography Blue Ribbons, Bitter Bread. In 2005, HarperCollins published her popular title Great Pioneer Women of the Outback, and in April 2007 will publish To Hell and Back, Sydney Loch’s formerly banned account of fighting in Gallipoli. For additional details see susannadevries.com.au.

Kaye Dobbie / Lily Sommers
Kaye began writing romance for Mills and Boon in the 1980s. After five romance novels, she began writing mainstream fiction, including five Australian historical novels under the name Lilly Sommers. Kaye has now returned to her first love, romance, and has signed a contract with Avon in the USA.

Kay Donovan
Kay Donovan has spent many years working as a researcher, producer and director of television programs and documentaries. Bush Oranges, published last year, is her first novel.

Grace Dugan
Grace Dugan was born in Melbourne and grew up in 'Warwick on the Darling Downs, Queensland. She began writing The Silver Road in the final months of high school and continued working on it while studying a BA in Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland. Grace's short stories have been published in anthologies such as Eidolon I and Agog! Smashing Stories. With a group of sf writers in Brisbane, she co-founded the Clarion South Writers' Workshop, and in 2004 was able to attend the original Clarion workshop at Michigan State University. Grace lives in a shabby Queenslander in Brisbane's inner west. She works as an English language teacher and (more recently) as a sessional tutor in creative writing at Queensland University of Technology, where she is also studying an MA and writing her next novel The Motherland Garden. Visit Grace's website at gracedugan.net.