I was born in New Zealand in 1956 and first came to Australia in 1978.
I wrote for fun for many years, especially while I was traveling overseas, and have probably written thousands of letters to family and friends (but never kept a diary – at least, not for any length of time).

When I first moved to Melbourne in 1981, I attended a creative writing class at the Footscray Women’s Learning Centre. This led to my studying an Arts degree at Deakin University and moving into the area of community writing. I taught writing workshops and was an active member of Victorian Community Writers for many years. I was also the Writing and Publishing Officer at Footscray Community Arts Centre for 6 years.

That first writing class developed into an ongoing women’s writing group, Western Women Writers. This group has been a wonderful inspiration and help to me over the years, and we produced forty issues of our poetry magazine, Poetrix, Australia’s only poetry magazine for women.

While WWW still meet occasionally, my workshop group now is Big Fish, a dedicated group of writers who focus on their novels. Each month we usually workshop a chapter of each person's novel or memoir, and sometimes short stories. It's a great inspirational and supportive group.

In 1996 I began writing for children, largely because of encouragement from a friend, Meredith Costain, who has written and/or edited a huge number of children’s and YA books. My first book The Too-Tight Tutu was published by Penguin in 1997 as one of the first Aussie Bites. Since then, I have had over 70 children’s and YA books published in Australia, and several in the US, China, Mexico, Spain and UK.
I also have written a vast amount of poetry over the years and have had two collections published by Pariah Press – 'Edge' and 'Thicker Than Water'. This has now expanded further into writing poetry for children, and my first book was 'Farm Kid', published in 2004 by Penguin. 'Farm Kid' is a novel in poems for 8-12 year olds (or anyone who likes poetry!), and it won the 2005 NSW Premier's Award for Children's Writing. I've since written more verse novels - 'Sixth Grade Style Queen (Not!)' was an Honour Book in the 2008 CBCA Awards - and 'Motormouth' was published in March 2010 (all Penguin Books). In 2013, my fourth verse novel, 'Runaways', was published.

Then in 2021, 'Mina and the Whole Wide World' was published by UQP. It received wonderful reviews, but the most wonderful thing happened - it won the 2022 Prime Minster's Award for Children's Literature!

Recent books have included the Rose stories (Our Australian Girl - Penguin), 'Jimmy's War', and the Ellyse Perry series (PRH). 'Dying to Tell Me' is my MG crime/mystery novel, published 2013.

I have continued with writing crime novels for adults all this time, and in 2018 I entered the CWA Debut Dagger, and was shortlisted. From this, the novel - 'Trust Me, I'm Dead' featuring my character, Judi Westerholme - was picked up and published by Verve Books UK. The next in the series, 'Dead and Gone' came out in 2020. In 2022, the third Judi Westerholme book, 'Mad, Bad and Dead' was published. Other crime novels are completed and looking for a publisher.

One of the areas I was involved with early on in community writing projects was self-publishing. I worked for a printer and, through helping to produce a number of community anthologies and magazines, I began to teach other people how to publish their own books. This resulted in a how-to guide Successful Self-Publishing which was published by Hale & Iremonger in 1997. It's interesting how things have changed over the years, and yet many of the principles of SSP have remained the same.

In some ways it was inevitable that all the teaching I was doing would lead to something more “academic”. In 1996 I began teaching in the Diploma of Arts (Professional Writing & Editing) at Holmesglen TAFE, and then at Victoria University. Subjects I taught included Writing for Children, Writing for Young Adults, Short Story, Novel Writing, Poetry, Editing, Myths & Symbols and Small Press Publishing. I left VU Polytech in 2019 so pursue my own writing and editing. It's sad to know that the course, which did so well there and had so many wonderful students, is no longer being offered by VU.

I have always loved to study, especially various aspects of writing and publishing. In 2013, I graduated from a Master of Fine Arts program at Hamline University in St Paul, Minnesota. The MFA is a specialisation in Writing for Children and Young Adults. I then undertook a PhD in creative writing at Victoria University, Melbourne, and my topic was fairy tales. I graduated in 2018 as Dr Clark!

Today my time is divided between writing and editing. I also speak at conferences, teach one-off workshops, visit schools and participate in events such as the MS Readathon and children’s book events.

I write short stories and personal essays, as well as poems for adult readers, when I'm stirred by a topic. You can see an example of a personal essay - With These Hands - here. This won the Ada Cambridge Award a few years ago. I also write online for Medium, and occasionally produce a newsletter.