Fiona McFarlane's first novel, The Night Guest, won several prizes including the Voss Literary Prize and New South Wales Premier's Award, and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and Miles Franklin Literary Award, among others. She is also the author of the short story collection The High Places, which won the International Dylan Thomas Prize, and The Sun Walks Down, which was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize. Her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Best Australian Stories. McFarlane grew up in Sydney and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.