Isobelle Carmody is among the biggest names in Australian fantasy writing. The Gathering was a joint winner of the 1993 Children’s Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Award and the 1994 Children’s Literature Peace Prize. Billy Thunder and the Night Gate (reprinted by Random House Children's Books as Night Gate in 2005) was shortlisted for the Patricia Wrightson Prize for Children’s Literature in the 2001 New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards. The author lives in Apollo Bay, Australia, and Prague, Czech Republic.