Kim Wilkins
I was born in London in 1970. For the first few years of my life I lived at the Wimbledon tennis centre, where my father ran the New Zealand club. My parents were expatriate antipodeans on their overseas adventure when they (accidentally) produced my brother and I. We returned to Australia just before my fourth birthday, and moved into a creepy old Queenslander a block from the beach at Redcliffe. I developed a love of the sea very early on, and my favourite thing to do was to sit in the long grass on the cliffs and write stories.
I always loved books; and although my family had very little money, we were well supplied with stories. My dad encouraged me to write and be creative, and was genuinely delighted when I started writing my first novel at the age of nine. I read it to him in instalments, and he would pretend that he didn't believe I'd written it, because it was too good (it was actually quite bad). I lived to please my father, and as he went rapidly downhill with a chronic alcohol addiction--it eventually killed him in 1990--I found writing stories a wonderful way to feel like I had some control in a frightening world. And that's what I still do: control frightening worlds. It's a habit that's hard to break.
I worked in some awful, awful jobs over the years: fast food and typing being chief among them. I mucked around in rock bands for a long time too and, although pretty much every band I was in was crap, it led me to meet my partner Mirko in 1989. He studies opera now, so we've both become old fogies in our later years.
My first novel was published in 1997. The Infernal went on to win the Aurealis Awards for best horror novel and best fantasy novel that year, and has to date been published in the UK, Germany and France. My second book Grimoire followed in 1999, and The Resurrectionists was published by HarperCollins in 2000. I also have a love for classic literature, and I've been studying at university since 1995. I have an Honours degree, a Masters degree and a University Medal for my troubles, and I'm currently working on my doctoral thesis in British Romanticism at University of Queensland.
I have two great passions besides literature. The first is travel. We were so poor when I was young that a trip overseas meant Bribie Island; so when I first started making money out of writing I booked a trip to Europe. I intend to try to get there every year or so. I fixate on certain cities--Berlin, St Petersburg, London--and have to go back again and again, planning eventually to set stories there. My other great passion is animal welfare. I'm a vegetarian, a staunch supporter of cruelty free cosmetics, a member of the RSPCA and Animal Liberation, and I believe very strongly in looking after our furry friends, because unfortunately a lot of the time they can't look after themselves.
I live in Brisbane still, in a leafy suburb near the river. I just bought a flat and have finished redecorating it, and I love it a lot. My goals in life are unambitious: to be a happy old lady with a house looking over the sea, and to discover a potion to make my cat live forever. Visit the offical Kim Wilkins website at www.kimwilkins.com |
