Martin Thomas is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the School of History at the Australian National University. He is the author of the acclaimed and award-winning The Artificial Horizon: Imagining the Blue Mountains (2003), which won the Gleebooks Prize at the 2004 NSW Premier's Literary Awards and was also shortlisted for the Award for Non Fiction, 2004 Festival Awards for Literature, and the Award for Innovation in Writing at the 2004 Festival Awards for Literature.