Isobelle Carmody wrote her first book, Obernewtyn, at fourteen. The first publisher she sent it to accepted it. It was shortlisted for Children's Book of the Year. Almost 30 years later, Obernewtyn is a Classic Penguin and Isobelle is a multi-award-winning writer of more than thirty novels and many short stories, and aside from the Peace Prize, she has won the Children's Book Council Book of the Year twice, in two different categories, the Golden Aurealis, in the one year it was run and a White Raven at Bologna Book Fair for Greylands, now in development as a screenplay. Isobelle lived with her partner and daughter for ten years in Prague in Eastern Europe until recently, when she returned to Australia to undertake a PhD at the University of Queensland. These days, Isobelle divides her time between a temporary home in Queensland and her house on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria. She has recently finished the final Obernewtyn book, The Red Queen.