Geraldine Brooks is an Australian author, who grew up in the Western suburbs of Sydney.

She attended Sydney University and worked as a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald. She completed a Master's Degree in journalism at Columbia University in New York City in 1983, and worked for The Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans.

Her first book, Nine Parts of Desire (1994), based on her experiences among the Muslim women of the Middle East, was an international bestseller, translated into 17 languages. Foreign Correspondence (1997), which won the Nita B. Kibble Award for women's writing, was a memoir and travel adventure about a childhood enriched by penpals from around the world, and her adult quest to find them.

Her first novel, Year of Wonders, published in 2001, is an international bestseller. Set in 1666, Year Of Wonders follows a young woman's battle to save her family and her soul when the plague suddenly strikes the small Derbyshire village of Eyam.

Her second novel, March, was published in late February 2005. An historical novel set during the US Civil War, it chronicles the war experiences of the March girls' absent father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.

Brooks married Tony Horwitz in Tourette-sur-loup , France, in 1984. They have one child and divide their time between homes in Virginia, United States and Sydney, Australia.

External links

• Author's website