Great Australian Women

Susanna de Vries is an international author and former lecturer at the Queensland University of Technology. She writes full-time but also lectures to branches of the Australian Fine and Decorative Art Society. She speaks fluent Spanish and French and has lived and worked in London, Edinburgh, Berlin, Florence, Barcelona and Sydney but now lives in Brisbane and has nine grandchildren. Susanna's fourteen books have won her literary awards in Ireland and Britain, an Order of Australia for services to literature and a Winston Churchill Fellowship.

Jane Clifton is the genuine show-business-all-rounder: actress, singer, and more recently, published crime novelist. Jane was born in Gibraltar, and emigrated to Australia in 1961. She has a BA from Monash University and was momentarily distracted from a career as an English teacher by Melbourne's alternative theatre and music scene. She is probably best known for the role of Margo in Prisoner. She went on to perform in a number of respected television dramas including Division 4 and Homicide. She also performed in the smash-hit stage shows Mum's the Word and Menopause the Musical, and in 2002, Jane published her first novel.