Marianne Curley is a well-known Australian author, celebrated for her work in the fantasy, young adult, paranormal, children's books, and time travel genres. She is most famous for her Old Magic books and the Guardians of Time and Avena series. Curley's writing has earned her a strong reputation worldwide and established her as a notable author of fantasy stories.
Born on May 20, 1959, in Windsor, NSW, Australia, Curley is the youngest of four children. She grew up in a rural area, often without close neighbors, and found solace in reading. Her love for reading led her to imagine herself in the lives of the characters she read about, which became her friends as a lonely, shy child. Curley's favorite school subjects were English and History, even though she excelled in Mathematics. She began her writing career in her thirties, after teaching office studies and computers at an adult technical college. Curley started with romance novels but found them unsatisfying and decided to try writing paranormal/fantasy set in a modern world, drawing inspiration from her two teenage daughters and her love of history.
In 2004, Curley was diagnosed with an aggressive form of bone marrow cancer called Myelofibrosis. Given only a short time to live, she received a stem-cell bone marrow transplant using her sister's stem cells, which saved her life. Curley has been cancer-free for seventeen years and has written a new trilogy called The Avena Series, with Hidden, Broken, and Fearless published in 2013, 2014, and 2015, respectively. In 2018, she published The Shadow, the long-awaited fourth book in The Guardians of Time Series, and plans to write more novels for this series. Curley is currently working on a new YA Paranormal Fantasy/Time Travel and a YA Contemporary title.