Kate Grenville

Grenville grew up in Sydney and holds a master's degree in creative writing from the University of Colorado, after several years living in France, England, and the United States before settling permanently back in Sydney.

The Idea of Perfection (1999), her fifth novel, follows an awkward engineer and an outspoken museum curator falling for each other while clashing over a heritage timber bridge in a fictional rural town; it won the Orange Prize in 2001.

Her later novel The Secret River, a Booker-shortlisted account of early colonial settlement and violence against Aboriginal Australians, ignited a fierce national debate over novelists' right to fictionalize that history.