Elizabeth Knox

---

Elizabeth Knox was born in Wellington, New Zealand, the middle child of three sisters. The sisters were close and always played imaginary games – games which became one game, an on-going saga set in another world, shared not only with her sisters but several friends. One day, when she was sixteen, her father interrupted a discussion the girls were having about the possible results of a secret treaty, saying, “I hope you’re writing some of this down.” As a result, Elizabeth, her sisters and friend began writing letters between their characters and stories about them. Elizabeth enjoyed it and decided that writing fiction was what she wanted to do.

After secondary school, Elizabeth took a job as a clerk in the Inland Revenue Department, saving enough to spend eight months living on her savings and writing a novel. While the novel was never published and she returned to office work, it was the beginning of Elizabeth’s writing career.

Elizabeth later began a degree in English Literature at Victoria University, and was awarded the ICI Writers Bursary (now the Louis Johnson Bursary) the year she graduated. Elizabeth has been a full time writer of both adult and young adult books since 1997. Her best known books are The Vintner’s Luck (shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 1999), and The Dreamhunter Duet, with Dreamquake awarded the American Library Association’s Michael L Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature. Elizabeth lives in Wellington, NZ with her husband and son.

Author's Comment: Why I began writing, and why I continued, comes down to two things. The first is a desperate need to be someone other than myself, and a delight in being someone else, somewhere else. That accounts for the novels. The other thing that made me start, and go on, was an urge to save what I cared for, to commemorate what I loved.

Sometimes I feel that, although I have managed to become a writer, my true aim is somehow to become a book.

Nationality: New Zealander