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The countdown begins: Australia’s best novelists

After weeks of voting for Australia’s Favourite Novelist we have our top 50. It’s a wonderful collection of authors, reflecting the diversity and vibrancy of Australian Literature.

So without further ado, here are the 50-41 placings for Australia’s Favourite Novelist, as voted by you.


50. Kate Grenville

Kate Grenville is one of Australia’s best-known authors. She’s published eight books of fiction and four books about the writing process. Her best-known works include the international best-seller The Secret River,The Idea of Perfection, and The Lieutenant.

The Secret River has won many prizes, including the Commonwealth Prize for Literature and the Christina Stead Prize. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Miles Franklin Award.

Several of her novels have been made into major feature films, and all have been translated into European and Asian languages.

In March 2010 Kate Grenville was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of New South Wales and in November 2012 she was awarded the same honour by the University of Sydney.

Click here to go to Kate Grenville’s author page

 


 

49. Mandy Magro

Mandy Magro lives in the picturesque country township of Mossman, North Queensland, with her husband and daughter.

She loves writing about the Australian outback and all the wonderful characters who live there, and her own adventures on the land have made her the passionate country woman she is today.

Her previous novels include Rosalee Station and Jacaranda.

Click here to go to Mandy Magro’s author page

 


48. Colleen McCullough

Colleen McCullough was born in western New South Wales in 1937. A neuroscientist by training, she worked in various Sydney and English hospitals before settling into ten years of research and teaching in the Department of Neurology at the Yale Medical School in the USA.

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In 1974 her first novel Tim was published in New York, followed by the bestselling The Thorn Birds in 1977 and a string of successful novels, including the acclaimed Masters of Rome series.

In 1980 she settled in Norfolk Island, where she lives with her husband, Ric Robinson, and a cat named Shady.

Click here to go to Colleen McCullough’s author page

 


 

47. Bronwyn Parry

International award winner Bronwyn Parry’s romantic thrillers set in Australia’s wild places have been published in Australia, the UK, Germany and the Czech Republic, with her third novel, Dead Heat, released in April 2012.

The manuscript for her first novel, As Darkness Falls, won a prestigious Golden Heart Award from the Romance Writers of America, and her second novel Dark Country was a finalist in the Romance Writers of America RITA awards – the Oscars of romance writing.

Dark Country also won the Australian Romance Readers Association award for Favourite Romantic Suspense in 2010.

Click here to go to Bronwyn Parry’s author page


46. Anna Campbell

Anna Campbell has written six multi award-winning historical romances and her work is published in eleven languages.

She has won numerous awards for her Regency-set romances including Romantic Times Reviewers Choice, the Booksellers Best, the Golden Quill (three times), the Heart of Excellence (twice), the Aspen Gold (twice) and the Australian Romance Readers Association’s favorite historical romance (four times).

Her books have twice been nominated for Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA Award and three times for Australia’s Romantic Book of the Year. She launched her first series, “Sons of Sin”, with Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed in October 2012.

Click here to go to Anna Campbell’s author page

 


 

45. Margareta Osborn

Margareta Osborn is a fifth-generation farmer who has lived and worked on the land all her life. She also writes about it in the Gippsland Country Life magazine.

Home is the beautiful Macalister Valley of East Gippsland where, with her husband and three children, she spends many hours in the mountains in which her novels are set.

She is the author of two bestselling novels, Bella’s Run and Hope’s Road and the no.1 bestselling ebook A Bush Christmas. Her third novel, Mountain Ash, will be released in March 2014.

Click here to go to Margareta Osborn’s author page

 


44. Morris Gleitzman

Morris Gleitzman grew up in England and came to Australia when he was sixteen. He was a frozen-chicken thawer, sugar-mill rolling-stock unhooker, fashion-industry trainee, student, department-store Santa, TV producer, newspaper columnist and screenwriter until he wrote his first children’s novel in 1993.

He is now one of the world’s best-known and loved children’s authors. Gleitzman tackles tough subjects in a funny and offbeat way . He has never set out to write “issues books” and says that his writing is as much for himself as for his readers.

Click here to go to Morris Gleitzman’s author page

 


43. Dianne Blacklock

Dianne Blacklock was born in Sydney and grew up in the St George area, completed a bachelor of arts degree at the University of NSW, then married, raising four children. She has been a teacher, trainer, counsellor and market researchers.

Dianne was 39 and a part-time TAFE communications teacher when her first novel was chosen from the “slush pile” of unsolicited manuscripts at Pan Macmillan in 2000.

She has since had eight novels published, Call WaitingWife for HireAlmost PerfectFalse AdvertisingCrossing Paths,Three’s a CrowdThe Right Time and The Secret Ingredient.

When she’s not writing she goes on rampages through the house, cleaning and emptying out cupboards and making everyone do extra chores. Needless to say, the family prefers it when she’s writing.

Click here to go to Dianne Blacklock’s author page


42. Keri Arthur

Keri Arthur first started writing when she was twelve years old, and to date, she’s finished fifteen novels.

Her books have received many nominations and prizes, including making the final five in the Random House Australia George Turner Prize.

She has also been nominated in the Best Contemporary Paranormal category of the Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Awards, received a ‘perfect 10′ from Romance Reviews Today, as well as being nominated for Best Shapeshifter in PNR’s PEARL Awards.

She’s a dessert and function cook by trade, and married to a man who not only supports her writing, but who also does the majority of the housework. They have one daughter, and live in Melbourne,

Click here to go to Keri Arthur’s author page


41. Graeme Simsion

In 2007, Graeme completed his PhD in information systems and enrolled in the professional screenwriting course at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He has made a number of short films and his screenplay, The Rosie Project, won the Australian Writers Guild/Inception Award for Best Romantic Comedy Script in 2010. While waiting for The Rosie Project to be produced, he turned it into a novel which in June 2012 won the Victorian Premier’s award for an unpublished fiction manuscript.

Readers of The Rosie Project will know that Graeme Simsion has a first-class sense of humour. At professional conferences he has given addresses from on top of a ladder, dressed as a duck, and he once engaged a group of spellbound chartered accountants in community singing.

Click here to go to Graeme Simsion’s author page

 


This article originally appeared on Booktopia.com.au

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