Justine Larbalestier
Justine Larbalestier was born and raised in Sydney, with some sojourns to other parts of Australia with her anthropologist parents and younger sister.
She is the author of the Magic or Madness trilogy, in which the door of a house in Sydney opens onto a street in New York City. Magic or Madness won the 2007 Andre Norton Award and was shortlisted for the 2006 Ethel Turner Award, amongst many other honours. Justine has also edited a scholarly collection of feminist science fiction in the twentieth century, Daughters of Earth.
Justine and her husband, SF and YA writer Scott Westerfeld are based in both Sydney and New York City. They travel a lot to places including San Miguel de Allende (Mexico), Dunedin (New Zealand) and Buenos Aires (Argentina).
Justine wishes she had a clothes shopping fairy instead of the procrastination fairy she battles with almost every day.
Justine writes:
'How To Ditch Your Fairy was inspired by my friends Ron and Stephen. We were driving around the Sunshine Coast in Queensland and there were crazy amounts of traffic. Every time we needed a parking spot, if Stephen was driving we’d get one, but if it was anyone else we were out of luck. Ron declared that Stephen had a parking fairy, which got me thinking about what other kinds of fairies there could be and what it would be like if you had a fairy you didn’t want.
'Those ideas percolated in my back brain and didn’t pop up until very early one morning when I’d gotten up in a desperate attempt to meet my deadline for Magic Lessons later that day. I sat down to write about Reason Casino and what poured out instead was Charlie complaining about her parking fairy.
'When Scott, my husband, came down for breakfast, I proudly announced that I had more than 4,000 words. "That’s great," he said. "You will be able to get the book done in time!"
'"Um," I admitted. "I accidentally started a new novel . . ."'
Visit Justine's website at www.justinelarbalestier.com
Read her blog at http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/