Amy's Children - Masters, Olga

Olga Masters was born in rural Australia in 1919. Her first job, at seventeen, was at a local newspaper, where the editor encouraged her writing. She married at twenty-one and had seven children, working part-time as a journalist for papers such as the Sydney Morning Herald, leaving her little opportunity to develop her interest in writing fiction until she was in her fifties.

In the 1970s Masters wrote a radio play and a stage play, and between 1977 and 1981 she won a series of prizes for her short stories. Her debut collection, The Home Girls, won a National Book Council Award in 1983. It was followed by a novel, Loving Daughters, which was highly commended for the same award. Her next books, the linked stories A Long Time Dying and the novel Amy's Children, met with critical acclaim. This brief but highly prolific period ended when Masters died, following a short illness, in 1986. She had been at work on The Rose Fancier, a posthumously published collection of stories. Reporting Home, a selection of Masters' extensive journalism, was published in 1990. A street in Canberra bears her name.


Eva Hornung lives in South Australia. Writing as Eva Sallis, she won the Australian/Vogel and Dobbie awards her first novel, Hiam.Mahjar won the Steele Rudd Award and The Marsh Birds won the Asher Literary Award. Her most recent novel, Dog Boy, won the Prime Minister's Literary Award for fiction and, in Sweden, the Stora Ljudbokspriset.