Trudi Canavan biography

Trudi Canavan was born on the 23rd October 1969 in Melbourne, Australia. She won the Aurealis Award for her fantasy short story Whispers of the Mist Children in 1999 and has never looked back. In 2001 she further established herself as a fantasy writer of rare talent with The Magician's Guild, the first book in a trilogy which included The Novice and The High Lord.

“I did a lot of research before I was published, and I looked at all the authors that had been published and whether they had a degree and what the degree was in. And I found that only about half the authors had a degree, and only half of those had anything to do with writing. The other ones had degrees in other subjects like geology and biology and things like that. So I think you always need to have a great enthusiasm for other things as well."
Read more our interview with Trudi Canavan in August 2009

The inspiration behind The Black Magician Trilogy came when Trudi Canavan read of the homeless people of Barcelona being rounded up and moved out of the city shortly before the Barcelona Olympics in 1992.

She believes that the major factors that can help an author to become successful lie in reading and writing a lot. A love for writing is also important as many writer will not earn much from their chosen career. She also believes that learning how the book industry works is extremely important as the industry itself will help an author more if they show understanding of the difficulties that other sectors of the book industry face.

Everyone hopes their work will sell well, but few expect it. It surprised me that it sold at all, and then the degree of surprise I felt kept getting greater. I was surprised by the success in Australia, then astonished by how well it did in the UK.
Trudi Canavan being interviewed by scifi.uk.com

As Canavan began writing a new trilogy called the Age of Five she decided to enlarge the fantasy world and feature more characters. She found that doubling the characters meant double the work but also found the process to be a lot of fun.

Trudi Canavan is not a religious person and as such the Black Magician Trilogy was set in a nonreligious world. However, the Age of Five did feature a pantheon of gods.

Tolkien’s work inspired me to write, Raymond Feist’s Magician showed me fantasy didn’t have to be all European-based, Tanith Lee’s books showed me fantasy could be rich, exotic and come in different moods and styles, Guy Gavriel Kay’s writing style blew me away, Jennifer Fallon’s dialogue and humour is something to aspire to, Glenda Larke’s characters encourage me to break the mold, and Russell Kirkpatrick’s work reminds me that landscape can be a character, too.
Trudi Canavan interviewed by Orbit Books

August 12th 2009 interview with Trudi Canavan

By Joshua S HillIt has become quite apparent to me that Australia is producing more and more of fantasy’s best writers. Thankfully for me, they are also some of the nicest people around, and one of the best, Trudi Canava [...]

Read interview

All Trudi Canavan Reviews