About Ashley Hay

Ashley Hay’s four books of narrative non-fiction – The Secret and Gum, and Herbarium and Museum (the latter two in collaboration with photographer Robyn Stacey) – all reveal an ongoing fascination for stories about fabulous people and their obsessions.

Her essays, short stories and journalism have appeared in anthologies and magazines including Brothers and Sisters, The Monthly, The Bulletin, Best Australian Essays, Heat and When Books Die.

The Body in the Clouds, her first novel, was published by Allen & Unwin in September 2010 and described by The Weekend Australian as "a gorgeous, Fabergé egg of a book, enamelled with literary resonances and rhyming symbols, which we will still be reading decades from now".

Her second novel, The Railwayman’s Wife, will be published in April 2013 – preceded by a five-star review from Australian Bookseller and Publisher (available here). Gail Jones (author of Five Bells) has praised it as “A tender portrait of a marriage and the poetry and grief it contains; a beautiful, dreamy, melancholy book.”

Her work has been praised as “beautifully written and evocative” (Eureka Street), as “well researched and deliciously written” (Australian Book Review), and as having “a delightfully light style, sometimes reminiscent of a Wildean 1066 and All That” (Sydney Morning Herald).

“If Jane Austen were alive and working as an investigative reporter,” said The Australian, “she would write a book like The Secret.”