Alison Croggon

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-09-05

Alison Croggon is an Australian writer born in 1962 in Transvaal, South Africa, whose family relocated first to England and then to Australia, settling in Ballarat before eventually moving to Melbourne. She has worked as a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald and, as of 2023, serves as arts editor at The Saturday Paper; she also founded and edits the online writing magazine Masthead and writes theatre criticism. Croggon is best known for the Pellinor fantasy series, four novels for young adults beginning with The Gift (2003), an epic set in a richly imagined world built around music and magic. Beyond fantasy fiction, she is an accomplished poet, whose debut poetry collection won both the Anne Elder Award and the Mary Gilmore Prize, and she has written librettos for operatic works including Gauguin: A Synthetic Life (2000) and The Riders (2014), as well as the novella Navigatio (1996) and the critical essay collection Monsters: A Reckoning (2021). Her additional honors include the 2009 Pascall Prize for Critical Writing for her theatre blog and a 2023 shortlisting for the NSW Premier's Translation Prize for her translation of Duino Elegies. She lives in Melbourne with her husband, playwright Daniel Keene, and their three children.

Universe(s)

Books

• The Gift (2002) · The Books of Pellinor Core Canon
• The Riddle (2004) · The Books of Pellinor Core Canon
• The Crow (2008) · The Books of Pellinor Core Canon
• The Singing (2008) · The Books of Pellinor Core Canon
• The Bone Queen (2016) · The Books of Pellinor Expanded Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 4 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 3 (1 finalist mention, 2 nomination)

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