Sylvia Kelso was telling stories before she could write them down. Born in Townsville, North Queensland, she has lived here since 1983, but has also travelled extensively, including three years in Europe researching a historical novel on the Second Punic War. She began writing fantasy after returning to Australia in 1980, with a fresh eye for local landscapes. Her first fantasy novel, Everran’s Bane, appeared in 2005; its sequel, The Moving Water, was a finalist for best fantasy novel in the 2007 Aurealis Australian genre fiction awards. In 2008 Amberlight was also a finalist. The Red Country, the sequel to The Moving Water, appeared in 2008. The sequel to Amberlight, Riversend, came out in 2009, and the third Amberlight book, Source, will be released is September 2010.
The two parts of The Solitaire Ghost, a mystery/suspense romance, combining research with family stories and local history, are scheduled for release in 2011.
Short fiction includes “Slick,” 2004, “The Cretaceous Border,” 2008, “The Sharp Shooter”, 2009, and under contract is a further short story, “An Offer You Couldn’t Refuse.” Sylvia has published poetry in Australian literary magazines and a national anthology of women’s poetry. After getting a BA with first class honours in English she left University till the mid ‘80s, when she began teaching part-time at James Cook University in Townsville. She now has a PhD on feminism’s interaction with SF and the Gothic, and a Creative Writing MA based on an SF novel set in alternate North Queenslands. She continues to teach at James Cook, where she is now an adjunct lecturer, while giving conference papers and publishing articles from research focused on women’s writing in SF, Fantasy, and horror fiction.
She lives in a house with a lot of trees in the garden but no cats, dogs or children. When not writing or reading she likes to play Celtic music on a whistle, with or without friends.
