Francesca De Tores

Francesca is an author and academic. She writes historical fiction. Her latest novel is Saltblood (Bloomsbury), based on the true story of Mary Read, a historical figure from piracy’s Golden Age. Saltblood was a Sunday Times top-twenty bestseller, and won the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize.

Francesca grew up in lutruwita/Tasmania, gained her PhD from the University of Melbourne, and was a senior lecturer and a Visiting Writing Fellow at the University of Chester. Her poetry has been published in literary journals and anthologies in both Australia and England, and a collection of poetry, Bodies of Water, was published in 2006. In 2010 she was awarded a Hawthornden Fellowship. She lives in naarm/Melbourne, on the unceded land of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin nation.

Photo credit: Andrew North