Kerry Greenwood
About
Kerry Greenwood is the author of the Phryne Fisher and Corinna Chapman series of crime novels, as well as a large number of plays and books in a variety of genres and categories.
Kerry was born in Footscray, studied English and works as a Legal Aid lawyer. She has been a playwright, folk-singer, factory hand, director, producer, translator, costume-maker and cook.
Her first book, Cocaine Blues, a murder mystery set in the 1920s, was published by McPhee/Gribble in 1989. The elegant and irrepressible sleuth, Phryne Fisher, has since returned almost annually.
Kerry has contributed to many anthologies including Dale Spender’s Weddings and Wives. She has also published a history of the Springvale Legal Service called It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time (MUP 1994).
Kerry co-authored a cookbook and detective story pastiche called Recipes for Crime (1995) with Dr Jenny Pausacker, as well as a book of essays on female murderers called The Thing She Loves: Why Women Kill.
Kerry’s YA fiction includes the fantasy novel, The Broken Wheel (winner of the Aurealis Award for best Young Adult Science Fiction in 1996), Whaleroad, Cave Rats and Feral (a notable CBC listing).
Kerry edited On Murder and On Murder 2 as well as a 1918 diary, A Different Sort of Real: The Diary of Charlotte McKenzie (an Honour book in CBC Book of the Year 2002). Her first young reader’s crime novel, The Three Pronged Dagger, won a Davitt Award, and was followed by the sequels The Wandering Icon and Danger Do Not Enter.
In 2004 Kerry began a new detective series, featuring contemporary baker-sleuth Corinna Chapman. Kerry’s work has been recognised with a Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award.
