Jane Harper

Jane Harper was born in Manchester, United Kingdom, before moving to Australia with her family at the age of eight. After spending six years in Boronia, Victoria, she obtained Australian citizenship.

Upon returning to the UK as a teenager, Jane resided in Hampshire and later pursued a degree in English and History at the University of Kent in Canterbury. Following her graduation, she completed a journalism entry qualification and landed her first reporting job as a trainee at the Darlington & Stockton Times in County Durham.

For several years, Jane worked as a senior news journalist at the Hull Daily Mail before relocating back to Australia in 2008. Initially employed at the Geelong Advertiser, she later joined the Herald Sun in Melbourne in 2011.

In 2014, Jane entered a short story competition and was among the 12 selected for the annual Fiction Edition of the Big Issue. This experience motivated her to pursue creative writing more extensively, leading her to apply for the Curtis Brown Creative online 12-week novel writing course with a book submission that later became The Dry, which she completed during the course.

Currently, Jane resides in St Kilda, Australia, with her husband.