Rita de Heer cut her storytelling teeth on inventing fantastical bedtime stories for her brothers and sisters, and intricate sagas for walking reluctant children to school. After a dozen years of teaching interspersed with bouts of travelling and motherhood, she studied creative writing at Southern Cross University (Lismore, NSW).

Since polishing her speculative fiction ideas at the Online Writers Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, she’s been writing, writing and writing.

There’s something very satisfying about building a world, inhabiting it with a people seemingly entirely unlike us, writing their lives and proving in the meantime their essential humanity.

Originally from the Netherlands, she lives in the far northeast of NSW, Australia, surrounded by a wild nature garden. A fierce, black-and-white indoor guard-cat helps to keeps wild critters out of the house.