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. Her books of essays, In Full View, New York, and Between Mexico and Poland, were critical successes, and her more recent novel, Too Many Men, was a bestseller both in Australia and in Germany. She is married to the Australian painter David Rankin, and lives in New York.