Born in Oamaru and educated at Otago and Toronto, Fiona Farrell has been writing since the 1980s. To date she has published two books of poetry, two collections of short stories and three novels. Her first novel, The Skinny Louie Book, won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction in 1992. She has won many other awards, including the Bruce Mason Award for Playwrights and the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship in Menton. Her last novel, The Hopeful Traveller, was runner-up for the Deutz Medal for Fiction in the 2003 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.