Tansy Rayner Roberts

Tansy Rayner Roberts (born 1978) is an award-winning Australian fantasy writer. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons), and completed a PhD in Classics in 2007, both from the University of Tasmania. Roberts's short stories have been published in a variety of genre magazines, including Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and Aurealis. In 1998, Roberts won the inaugural George Turner Prize for Splashdance Silver, awarded to an unpublished Australian science fiction/fantasy novel each year. Set in the comic fantasy world of 'Mocklore', Splashdance Silver was published by Bantam in 1998. A sequel, Liquid Gold, and the chapbook novelette Hobgoblin Boots are also both set in 'Mocklore'. In 2007 her children's novel Seacastle was published by ABC Books. Seacastle is the first book in the seven-part children's book series The Lost Shimmaron, sold to ABC Books by Australian writers group wRiters On the Rise (RoR). In May 2010 Power and Majesty, Book One of the Creature Court trilogy, was published by HarperCollins Voyager. Roberts has described the Creature Court trilogy as a combination of two fantasy sub-genres: court fantasy and urban fantasy.

Roberts was one of the founding members of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and edited issues 9 in 2003 and issue 23 in 2006. She also co-edited AustrAlien Absurdities (Agog! Press) with Chuck McKenzie, an anthology of humorous Australian speculative fiction in 2002.

In 2010, Roberts won the WSFA Small Press Award for her novella Siren Beat, published by Twelfth Planet Press in 2009. Siren Beat was also nominated for the Australian Aurealis Awards for Best fantasy Short Story.