Born in 1983, author Tara June Winch based parts of her debut novel, Swallow the Air, in the place of her own birth, Wollongong (in the state of New South Wales). Leaving high school before having matriculated, Winch backpacked around Australia and developed a passion for the landscape and identity of her Island Nation which influenced her authoring of the novel.

Upon its publication in 2003, Swallow the Air won the David Unaipon Award, which specifically honours the emergence of avant-garde Indigenous writers, and later went on to secure the Victorian, Queensland and New South Wales Premiers’ Literary Awards and was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year in 2007.

Winch is an Australian of European and Aboriginal (Wiradjuri) descent.