Lily Brett was born in Germany and came to Melbourne with her parents in 1948. Her first book, The Auschwitz Poems, won the 1987 Victorian Premier's Award for poetry and both her fiction and poetry have won other major prizes, including the 1995 NSW Premier's Award for Fiction for Just Like That. In 1997 she published the collection of essays, In Full View, and in 1999 her acclaimed novel Too Many Men was published and became a bestseller in Australia and more recently in the US. Lily Brett is married to the Australian painter David Rankin. They live in New York.