Peter Carey

Carey worked for over a decade in Australian and London advertising agencies while writing fiction on the side, publishing surreal short-story collections and several unpublished novels before his first success; he later split his life between Australia and New York, where he has taught in Hunter College's MFA program for over two decades.

Oscar and Lucinda (1988), in which a fragile Victorian clergyman and a headstrong glass-factory heiress wager a crystal church transported across the outback, won the Booker Prize and established his reputation for ornate, fable-like historical invention. True History of the Kelly Gang (2000), narrated in the outlaw Ned Kelly's own semi-literate, unpunctuated voice modeled on his real Jerilderie Letter, won Carey a rare second Booker in 2001.

He remains one of only a handful of writers to win the Booker Prize twice, continuing to publish novels that range across Australian, American, and invented historical terrain.