Jane Sullivan is an author and literary journalist who loves books and has always written about them.

She was born in England to Australian parents, came to live in Melbourne in 1979 and worked at The Age as a reporter, feature writer and editor of various sections, including the books pages. She won the inaugural Australian Human Rights award for journalism.

At present she contributes to The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, writing features and a Saturday column, Turning Pages, about books and writing. She has also written for Meanjin, Griffith Review and Australian Book Review and has reviewed books for ABC Radio National.

She is the author of four books. The latest is Murder in Punch Lane (Echo, July 2024), a historical crime novel set in 1868 Melbourne which makes use of real events and characters from the brash gold rush city and its extremes of wealth and poverty, orgies and opium dens, theatres and hellfire preachers and rampant misogyny.

Her other novels are The White Star (Penguin, 2000) and Little People (Scribe, 2011), which was shortlisted for the Scribe/CAL Fiction award and the UK Encore prize for second novels. She has also written a nonfiction book, Storytime (Ventura Press, 2019), a memoir of growing up with books.

Visit: janesullivan.au

Photograph credit: Peter Derrett