Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka and migrated to Australia with her family in 1972. She has taught English at the University of Melbourne, as well as working as an editor and book reviewer. Her novels, The Rose Grower (1999) and The Hamilton Case (2003), have been published across the world and translated into several languages. The Hamilton Case won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for South-East Asia and the Pacific, the Encore Award and the Tasmania Pacific Prize for Australian and New Zealand fiction. The Lost Dog is her third novel. She lives in Melbourne.