Biography

Anne Bartlett grew up in rural South Australia, and studied English and Drama at Flinders University. She lives with her husband Russell in the Adelaide Hills and has four adult children.

When her children were young Anne did a variety of freelance work as boutique knitter, editor, ghostwriter, humour columnist, bio¬grapher, feature and children's writer. She has been writer-in-residence in various schools and taught creative writing at university.

In 1998 she completed a Master of Arts in Creative Writing, and was co-editor on the first University of Adelaide’s Creative Writing anthology, Iron Lace.

In the late 1990s research into a children’s biography of Daisy Bates turned out to be a highly confrontational experience, particularly as it coincided with the publication of Bringing Them Home, the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families.

Anne’s children’s book on Aboriginal history and culture, The Aboriginal Peoples of Australia, was published in Singapore (Times Editions) and USA (Lerner) as part of a First People’s Series in 2001. Distributed in Australia by Heinemann, it has been on the Premier’s Reading List of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales, and the Minister’s Reading List, ACT.

In 1999 she began work on commissions from State Aboriginal Affairs, recording the life stories of three Aboriginal elders. The Chairman (Australian Scholarly Publishing) the story of Ngarrindjeri elder Garnett Wilson, former member of the National Aboriginal Conference and former long-standing chair of the Aboriginal Lands Trust, was published in September, 2004.

Anne is currently enrolled in a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Adelaide, and has just completed her first adult novel, Knitting published in 2005 by Penguin (Australia) and Houghton Mifflin (USA), and in February 2006 by Penguin (UK).