Thomas Keneally was born in 1935 and has written prodigiously, both fiction and non-fiction. His novels include Bring Larks and Heroes, The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest, Schindler's Ark and The People's Train. He has the won the Miles Franklin Award, the Booker Prize, the Los Angeles Book Prize, the Royal Society of Literature Prize, the Scripter Award of the University of Southern California, the Mondello International Prize and the Helmerich Prize. He lives in Sydney with his wife, Judy, and is Number 1 ticket-holder of the Manly-Warringah Rugby League team.