Ashley Hay is a writer who lives in Brisbane, Australia.

Her new novel, The Railwayman’s Wife, was published in April 2013 by Allen and Unwin. Its first review was five stars from Australian Bookseller & Publisher, available here. It will be published overseas by Allen & Unwin UK in January 2014.

The Sunday Age said: "Ashley Hay's first work of fiction, The Body in the Clouds (2010), was nominated for several prestigious awards. The Railwayman's Wife, one of this year's standout novels so far, is a potential winner."

Read more of that review here.

“A tender portrait of a marriage and the poetry and grief it contains. A beautiful, dreamy, melancholy book.”
—Gail Jones, author of Five Bells

“An extraordinary light falls on every page of this tender and gripping story. The lives of a widow and a war poet, mending and dreaming in a tiny coastal village, reveal movingly a wider world of catastrophe, violence and beauty.”
—Belinda Castles, author of Hannah and Emil

“The Railwayman’s Wife illuminates the deepest places of the human heart.”
—Debra Adelaide, author of The Household Guide to Dying

For more information about the book, click here; for details of events relating to its publication, click here.

In 2012, Ashley’s article on dengue mosquitoes won one of the prizes in the inaugural Bragg Science Writing Prize and was shortlisted for the Eureka Prize in Science Journalism. It was also selected for that year's Best Australian Science Writing, edited by Elizabeth Finkel. To round out her quinella, "The Crow" was included in this year's Best Australian Short Stories, edited by Sonya Hartnett.

Ashley is the author of five previous books: four books of narrative non-fiction – The Secret and Gum, and Herbarium and Museum (the latter two in collaboration with photographer Robyn Stacey) – and a novel, The Body in the Clouds. This was shortlisted for categories in the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, and longlisted for the 2012 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

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