About

Short bio

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Michelle Prak’s tense debut thriller, The Rush, was published in 2023, and coastal thriller Barren Cape in 2025. She is a professional communicator with a thirty-year career in PR, social media, and politics. Her short stories have been shortlisted in competitions, and she was runner-up in the Furphy Literary Award 2021. Michelle lives in Adelaide and teaches communication subjects at Adelaide University.

 

Longer bio

Michelle Prak’s debut thriller The Rush was published by Simon & Schuster ANZ in 2023; Crooked Lane Books in the US; and by HarperCollins France (as Le Deluge). The Rush was voted into Better Reading’s annual Top 100 reads (2024), and longlisted in the Sisters of Crime Australia Davitt Awards. Her second thriller Barren Cape was published by Simon & Schuster ANZ in 2025.

Also a published short story writer, Michelle was runner-up in the Furphy Literary Award, 2021.

Between 2019 and 2020, Michelle self-published three women’s contemporary novels.

She’s a former PR and social media consultant who served on several boards including Crimestoppers SA and the SA Writers Centre. She now teaches in PR-related subjects at Adelaide University.

And more….

Hello, readers

I’ve written plenty of bios in my time, and I’d like to try something different with this one. You can search ‘Prakky’ elsewhere if you’d like to know about my employment, career background, and so on. But for this writing life, let me try a different tack…

About my writing
In one way or another, I have been writing for most of my life.

My father bought me a little red typewriter when I was in primary school and I taught myself to touch type. I wrote a weekly column for my school which was published in the local paper; wrote the school play in year 7; wrote a serialised (overly dramatic) story which was read out almost daily by my teacher. So yes – I had a lot of encouragement at school. It was suggested that I ask for keys to the book room (a secret privilege) so I could check out novels as easily and frequently as I liked. It was a government school in a low socio-economic suburb of a steel city, so I consider myself very fortunate to have had teachers who supported me in those ways.

Fast forward to uni, I studied journalism but quickly learned I didn’t want to be a journalist. I was writing short stories, had one published in Meanjin in ’91, and a few others in various publications which have since become defunct. At the same time, I was very focused on earning a stable income (something that fiction writing isn’t renowned for!) and acquiring an independence and economic safety that wasn’t present in my childhood. I wanted to be able to reliably house, feed and clothe myself. For many people that might be a given in terms of life aspirations, but growing up I knew that wasn’t the case for everybody in the community.

With my BA in Journalism, I moved into corporate communications jobs and pushed away any desire to write creatively – instead I was writing media releases, speeches, briefing notes, newsletters, columns, blogs, tweets, you name it. I did join the SA Writers’ Centre Board, to ‘give back’ in a way. I’m still a member (of the now-titled Writers SA) and I love taking part in networking opportunities.

Between 2018 and 2020, I self-published three women’s contemporary novels and now I’m back into the genre that’s my first love: thrillers. I’m a big fan of the thriller genre, in both novels and TV streaming, and will also regularly dive into the literary genre, especially when it comes to short stories.

And a bit more about me
On a more personal level: I’m an early bird, and get my best work done between 7am and 12 noon. (I do think the modern world needs siestas). I still marvel at being able to stream and binge TV shows. I like bitey cheese. I loathe fruit cake. And I’m mother to two adult sons who have binged a lot of novels, and are constant story-consumers via all sorts of media.

I was born in Perth, Western Australia to young parents. My mother was born in Finland, my father the Netherlands. I grew up in Whyalla, South Australia.

I’d love to hear from you: email me via michelleprakauthor@gmail.com, see @prakky on Twitter or leave a comment on the “Michelle Prak Author” Facebook page.

Represented by: Melanie Ostell Literary.

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