About the author

Shelley Burr, 34, was raised in Newcastle and currently lives in Canberra with her husband, daughter, one cat and “a huntsman spider we call Frank”. Wake is her debut novel and its setting was informed by her childhood. “My parents divorced when I was very young, and my brother and I spent my father’s custody time with him on our grandparents’ farm outside Glenrowan,” she explains. “My time spent roaming the paddocks and bushland had a profound influence on writing Wake.” The manuscript won the 2019 CWA Debut Dagger, which sparked a bidding war.