Joanne Horniman grew up in a country town in northern NSW. She read books, rode her bicycle around the countryside, and had a glove puppet theatre company with her best friend. They 'toured' their show to all the classes in the school. On leaving school, Joanne went to Sydney, completed an arts degree and worked as an editor after a stint washing dishes in a pub. Since then she has worked as a teacher at TAFE and university, and she now lives with her family on a small acreage in the bush, where she plants rainforest trees and looks after a trio of chooks and a duo of ducks.
When did you start writing?
'When I was about six, I think. I had a collection of notebooks I wrote in. I gave up for a while in primary school, because I didn't like the topics the teachers set, but in high school I wrote short stories at home and sent them away to magazines.'
If you weren't a writer, what would you be?
'Very bored. Nothing else interests me. Except, perhaps, being a puppeteer, or Dr Who.'