Kim Wilkins

About the Author

I was born in London, and my family brought me to Australia when I was four.

I grew up near the seaside in a creepy old Queenslander. Underneath it I had a cubbyhole where I used to go to write. I'd fill endless exercise books with earnest beginnings of stories, but didn't actually manage to finish my first novel until I was eleven. It was a story about three orphans who inherited a haunted house and somehow got mixed up with an international diamond smuggling ring. I wish I still had it, but I burned it in a fit of teenage disdain.

During my teenage years, I wrote reams of unimaginative fantasy fiction, in which an unpopular buck-toothed girl saved the world. Then I got braces and my heroines were rather straighter-toothed. I worked for a long time in bad jobs: hospitality, typing, and indulging an embarrassing wish to be an alternative rock goddess. Then I decided I didn't know enough and went to university, so far picking up an English degree with first class honours, a university medal, and an MA in creative writing. The PhD is nearly finished. All along, I've never stopped writing.

In 1997 my first novel The Infernal was published. It went on to win the 1997 Aurealis Awards for best horror novel, and best fantasy novel. Grimoire was next in 1999, then I changed publishers. HarperCollins published The Resurrectionists in October 2000; Angel of Ruin in October 2001; The Autumn Castle in June 2003; and Giants Of The Frost in 2004. I also write a young adult series about a teenage psychic detective, published by Penguin. My books are sold all over the world.