Rosalie Ham was born and raised in Jerilderie, country Australia. As a farmer’s daughter, she has fond memories of life on the farm as a child – swimming in creeks, riding a horse whilst herding sheep, splitting firewood to keep their house warm and learning to drive when she was nine so that she could help out on the farm. She matriculated from St Margaret’s School in Melbourne in 1972 and travelled overseas briefly before returning home to study education at Deakin University. On the request of a friend, Ham began writing some stage and radio plays but discontinued as she did not feel an affinity with theatre. A self-described ‘accidental novelist’, Ham realised that she enjoyed the art of novel writing and completed a degree at RMIT in Advanced Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing and later, a Master of Arts (Creative Writing) in 2007.

The Dressmaker was her debut novel in 2000 and it received critical praise for its unusual style and resonating Australian characters. In addition, Summer at Mount Hope (2005), There Should Be More Dancing (2011) and The Year of the Farmer (2018) were all equally captivating and all are rooted in small rural communities around the Australian landscape. Common themes throughout her works include revenge, gossip, love, betrayal, isolation, manipulation and the study of human nature.

The The Dressmaker film was released in 2015 starring global star Kate Winslet as Tilly and Australian great Judy Davis as Molly. The novel was short-listed for the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction at the New South Wales Literary Awards and was the 2007 finalist at the State Library of Victoria’s Most Popular Novel. It has appeared in the various curriculum text lists around Australia, multiple times.

Ham worked sporadically as a nurse until 2005, to subsidise her writing career, but when the nursing home she worked at closed down, she took work as a literature teacher at Trinity College in Melbourne, the University of Melbourne and RMIT.

She currently lives with her husband Ian in Brunswick, Melbourne. Ham’s brothers still live on the family farm and work the land.