Harper worked as a journalist for thirteen years before debuting her first novel, which sold over a million copies worldwide and earned her global recognition. She is currently working on her fifth novel.
Continue reading to know more about the Australian author.
A British-born Australian Author
The 41-year-old Jane was born in Manchester, England, in 1980 and immigrated to Australia with her family when she was eight years old. She lived in Boronia, Victoria, for six years and obtained Australian citizenship during that time.
She returned to the UK with her family as a teenager and resided in Hampshire before attending the University of Kent in Canterbury to study English and History.
After graduation, she landed her first reporting job as a trainee on the Darlington & Stockton Times in County Durham. She then worked as a senior news journalist for the Hull Daily Mail for several years before returning to Australia in 2008.
From Online Writing Course to Best-Selling Novelist
After moving back to Australia, Jane first worked as a reporter for the Geelong Advertiser. She then moved to Melbourne in 2011 and began working in business reporting.
In 2014, her short story was chosen for the Big Issue’s annual Fiction Edition. That encouraged her to explore creative writing more seriously, and she made her debut in 2015 with The Dry at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards.
Photo credit: Instagram/janeharperauthor
Her debut novel “The Dry” earned several awards, including the 2017 ABIA Award and the 2017 Indie Award. She then penned three other international bestselling novels – Force of Nature, The Lost Man, and The Survivors.
Following the publication of The Survivors, a standalone mystery set in Tasmania, Jane is now working on her fifth novel. She has won numerous top awards, including the Australian Indie Awards Book of the Year, the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel, and the British Book Awards Crime and Thriller Book of the Year.
Jane’s bestselling novels have sold millions of copies worldwide, helping her amass a massive fortune. She is now a millionaire, but the exact figure of her net worth is still unknown.
Married Her Dancing Partner
Jane lives in bayside Melbourne with her husband and their two children – a son (b. Nov 2019) and a daughter, Charlotte. Their daughter was born in 2016 between Jane’s first and second bestsellers.
Jane Harper gave birth to her second child, a son, in November 2019.
Photo credit: Instagram/janeharperauthor
Jane got married to her husband, Peter Strachan, on August 14, 2015. The two used to take dancing classes together before saying “I Do.”
Interesting Facts about the Author
Her hobbies include sewing, ballroom dancing, tennis, and piano lessons.
After her parents settled in North Yorkshire, her mother started teaching English to Gurkhas based at a military barracks, and her father opened a guitar shop. Her brother, Michael Harper, is an international tax consultant.
Although her accent is English, Jane perfectly captures Australian patterns of speech on paper.
She is Australia’s most widely read crime writer.
