Bruce Pascoe is a Bunurong, Tasmanian and Yuin man born in Melbourne who grew up on a remote island in Bass Strait and had a joey and a dog as pets. He lives in Gipsy Point in Victoria, where he has two children, three grandchildren and two dogs, Yambulla and Wangarabel.

Bruce’s books for children include Foxies in a Firehose (2006), Seahorse (2015) and Fog a Dox, which won the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Award (YA Fiction). His children’s book, Mrs Whitlam (2016), was shortlisted in the Children’s Book Council of Australia’s (CBCA) 2017 Book of the Year Awards in the Younger Readers category. 

Bruce is a prolific writer and has written more than 20 books, including short story collections Night Animals (1986) and Nightjar (2000); the novels Fox (1988), Ruby Eyed Coucal (1996), Ribcage (1999), Shark (1999), Earth (2001), Ocean (2002), and Bloke (2009); and historical works Cape Otway: Coast of Secrets (1997) and Convincing Ground (2007). His non-fiction book, Dark Emu (2014) continues to go into reprint and won the Book of the Year and Indigenous Writer’s Prize in the 2016 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. A children’s version of Dark Emu will be published by Magabala Books in 2018.