Carmel Bird

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Carmel Bird (August 31 1940 - ) is an Australian author.

Bird was born in Launceston, Tasmania. She took a BA from the University of Tasmania and taught from 1961 to 1981 (English and French in secondary schools until 1973), and she lived for a period in Europe and the USA before settling in Melbourne. While in Melbourne she taught adult courses at the Council for Adult Education in the short story. Her first book was Births, Deaths and Marriages, a collection of short stories, published in 1983. Her first and second books were self-published

In 1988 she wrote a popular writing guide Dear Writer. In 1995 her book The White Garden was nominated for The Age Book of the Year and was shortlisted for six other major awards. It was also shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, as was her earlier novel The Bluebird Cafe (1990). Many of her short stories and her two novels include themes of fantasy and horror. Her latest short story collection as of 2005 is The Essential Bird.

She has taught at many universities and TAFEs, including Holmesglen TAFE for 1986 and 1987 and most recently at La Trobe University in 2003, and has been a writer in residence. She also supported the Arts Victoria young writers programme and gave a two-week lecture at the Melbourne Zoo about writing. She is a frequent guest at the Melbourne Writers' Festival.

In 1996 she was one of the first Australian writers to use hypertext, creating and designing the website janeeyre@window, in which Jane Eyre is involved in creating a CD-ROM about the houses in her life. Also in 1996 she wrote a novel under the name Jack Power: Crisis, which she later released under her own name. She put The Red Shoes on CD-ROM.

Bird is a collector of paintings, especially of lesser known women painters.^[1]