Joy Dettman was born in country Victoria and spent her early years in towns on either side of the Murray River. She is an award-winning writer of short stories, the complete collection of which,
Diamonds in the Mud, was published in 2007, as well as the highly acclaimed novels
Mallawindy,
Jacaranda Blue,
Goose Girl,
Yesterday's Dust,
The Seventh Day,
Henry's Daughter,
One Sunday,
Pearl in a Cage,
Thorn on the Rose,
Moth to the Flame,
Wind in the Wires,
Ripples on a Pond,
The Tying of Threads,
The Silent Inheritance and
Trails in the Dust.Joy Dettman sees herself as a wife, mother and grandmother, who steals time from her family to satisfy her obsessive need to write.
Joy was not always a wife, mother and grandmother. She can recall her early obsession with newspaper cartoons. They were her picture books. A newspaper shoutline allowed her to break the code of reading prior to entering a school room, thus addicting her for life to the printed word.
Joy's early draft of Woody Creek, single spaced, margin to margin, messy, was typed on the family room table, where in 1986-7, she wrote Mallawindy. Her number one fan, her little sister, read it, and for the next ten years, publication became their joint obsession.
In 1997, she received a phone call from Pan Macmillan. Mallawindy was accepted for publication and by '98 Joy and her number one fan held that book in their hands.
Her other books include: Jacaranda Blue, Goose Girl, Yesterday's Dust, The Seventh Day, Henry's Daughter, One Sunday, Diamonds in the Mud, and bestselling the Woody Creek series.
Woody Creek originated as a novel, in the singular, but its characters too long buried, would not be contained. It grew into a series of six - Pearl in a Cage, Thorn on the Rose, Moth to the Flame, Wind in the Wires and Ripples on a Pond, the latest instalment being The Tying of Threads.
