Monica McInerney

Australian-born Monica McInerney is the author of five best-selling novels, Family Baggage, The Alphabet Sisters, Spin the Bottle, Upside Down Inside Out and A Taste for It, published internationally and in translation. Her articles and short stories have appeared in newspapers, magazines and anthologies in Australia and Ireland. In 2006, Monica was the main ambassador for the Australian Government's Books Alive national reading campaign, for which she wrote a limited edition novella called Odd One Out. Monica, 41, grew up in a family of seven children in the Clare Valley wine region of South Australia, where her father was the railway stationmaster and her mother worked in the local library. Since then Monica has lived all around Australia (in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart) in Ireland (in County Meath and Dublin) and in London and also travelled widely. She was a book publicist for ten years, working in Ireland and Australia and promoting authors such as Roald Dahl, Tim Winton, Edna O'Brien and Max Fatchen and events such as the Dublin International Writers' Festival. She has also worked as an event manager and organiser of tourism festivals in the Clare Valley; as a freelance writer/editor and in arts marketing in South Australia; a public relations consultant in Tasmania; a record company press officer in Sydney; a barmaid in an Irish music pub in London and as a temp, grapepicker, hotel cleaner, kindergym instructor and waitress. Her first job out of school as a 17-year-old was as wardrobe girl (and later scriptwriter) for the children’s TV show ‘Here’s Humphrey’ at Channel 9 in Adelaide. She is now a full-time writer. For the past fifteen years she and her Irish husband have been moving back and forth between Australia and Ireland. They currently live in Dublin, where she is working on her next novel.