Lucy Sussex (born 1957 in New Zealand) is an author working in fantasy and science fiction, children's and teenage writing, non-fiction and true crime. She is also an editor, reviewer, academic and teacher, and currently resides in Melbourne, Australia. She is often associated with feminist science fiction, Australiana, the history of women's writing, and detective fiction. Personal life Lucy Sussex was born in 1957 in Christchurch, New Zealand. She has lived in New Zealand, France, the United Kingdom and Australia, where she settled in 1971, and has spent the majority of her time since. She has a degree in English and an MA in Librarianship from Monash University, and also a Ph.D from the University of Wales. She has been writing since the age of eleven. In 1979 she attended a Sydney-based Science Fiction Writers' Workshop, conducted by Terry Carr and George Turner and soon after published her first short stories locally and overseas. Fiction Lucy Sussex's fiction has spanned a range of genres, including Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Crime and Detective fiction and been aimed at the children's, young adult and adult fiction markets. She has published six novels - the first appearing in 1995 - and over 30 short stories, which have been collected across three anthologies. Her first story to gain notice might be 1985's The Lipton Village Society, which involved the creation of an alternate world. Style and themes Sussex is strongly feminist. Victoriana styles and motifs recur in her work, as do dolls. The Scarlet Rider is a fictionalization of her search for Mary Fortune. Non fiction, academic and editorial work Sussex works as a freelance editor and researcher and has published literary criticism and journalism. She is a Fellow at the Federation University Ballarat, and La Trobe University. She writes reviews - until 2013 for The Age newspaper on a weekly basis, which involved reading 5-6 books per week. She has edited several anthologies, including She's Fantastical, the first collection of Australian women's speculative fiction, magical realism and fantasy to be published in that country. The volume was short listed for the prestigious World Fantasy Award in 1996. She has also described herself as a 'literary archaeologist' having rediscovered and republished the work of nineteenth-century Australian crime writers Mary Fortune and Ellen Davitt. Fortune's full identity was uncovered through Sussex's scholarship, having been previously only known by pseudonyms for many decades. Her Ph.D