A born and bred Sydneysider with Indigenous heritage, Lisa Chaplin spent four years in beautiful Zurich, Switzerland, gathering ideas for novels around Europe before returning to her native soil. Writing under the pseudonym, Melissa James, she tackles stories about the Stolen Generation, PTSD, and families with challenges. Her latest Melissa James’ novel is Beneath The Skin, a women’s fiction crime novel, with Aboriginal major and minor characters is being released in the US by MIRA HarperCollins in January 2020.
After writing 20 books, novellas and online reads for giant Harlequin that sold over 1.65 million books worldwide, she quit to concentrate on historical fiction. Her first historical fiction, The Tide Watchers, was based on a true story. In 2014 the book sold to William Morrow, a division of HarperCollins New York, and to six countries around the world. She’s currently working on the sequel, Blind Fall, as well as a YA sci-fi time-travel (from 2069 San Francisco to Lyon, France, during the Terror), and a historical post-WWI fiction for MIRA Australia.
Lisa will be part of the 2019 conference.
