P.A. O\'Reilly

Paddy O’Reilly’s latest novel, The Fine Colour of Rust, will be released in 2012 in Australia, the UK and the USA. Her short story collection, The End of the World (UQP) was released to critical acclaim in April, 2007. The stories in the collection have won a number of national and international story awards including ‘The Age’, the ‘Judah Waten’, ‘Zoetrope All-Story’ (USA) and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Corporation (UK). The End of the World was chosen as one of the year’s best books in various publications from Australian Book Review to The Financial Review. It was shortlisted in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards and commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. Paddy’s debut novel, The Factory, was also in the best books of the year lists in Australian Book Review and the Sydney Morning Herald and was Highly Commended in the FAW Christina Stead Award for Fiction. It was broadcast in fifteen episodes as the ABC Radio National Book Reading during July 2009. Her novella ‘Deep Water’ was published in 2007 as one of four in the novella anthology, Love and Desire. She has also written screenplays and worked as additional screenwriter for films which have been nominated for AFI awards and screened nationally and internationally. Paddy has been Asialink writer-in-residence in Japan, a fellow at Varuna: the Writers’ House, writer-in-residence at Kelly Steps Cottage, Tasmania, and The Lockup, Newcastle, presenter and reader at the International Conference on the Short Story in Toronto and a full fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, USA. Paddy spent several years working as a copywriter in Japan. She now lives in Melbourne, Australia.