CATHERINE JINKS
While her books span a large range of topics, the greatest love of Catherine's life is medieval history. Well known for her prize-winning series of Pagan novels, which take a very irreverent look at the life of medieval monks and crusaders, she has also written fantasy novels (Eye to Eye - a CBC award winner), books for younger readers (The Horrible Holiday in the Aussie Bites series) and a number of novels for adults - most recently a medieval whodunit, The Notary. Her two latest books for children are a picture book, You'll Wake the Baby, and What's Hector McKerrow Doing These Days?, a novel that revolves around a 'virtual' manhunt and delusion and duplicity on the Internet.

Catherine was born in Brisbane but spent most of her childhood in Papua New Guinea where her father was a patrol officer. She studied medieval history at Sydney University and then went to work for Westpac where she edited their in-house journal. Since 1993 she has been a full-time writer. As a young child she always wanted to write but was unable to devote her time to it until marriage to a Canadian took her to live in Nova Scotia for a couple of years. She now lives in the Blue Mountains with her husband and young child.

Of her work she says, 'I don't write books for messages, I write books because of stories. People. Characters.' She can always be relied upon to tell a rattling good yarn and given that the pin-up boy of her adolescence was Henry VII and that she is a self-confessed history freak, it's no wonder that her books have a lively and immediate sense of the past.

Catherine unfortunately has very limited time for school and library visits but is happy to consider invitations to conferences. For further info look at the Penguin website.

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