Jackie French

She was awarded the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. In 2016, French was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to literature as an author of children's books,and as an advocate for improved youth literacy. In 2016 she received the Australian Book Industry Awards Pixie O'Harris award.

Monkey BAA also turned her book Pete the Sheep, created with Bruce Whatley, into a musical, which toured Australia in 2014.

In 2014, she was awarded the Queensland Literary Awards Griffith University children's Book Award and the Children's Book Council of Australia Book of the Year Notable Award for Refuge, which was also shortlisted for the NSW Premier's History Award in two categories – Children's and Community Relations. Her book The Road to Gundagai, was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's History Awards, and short-listed for the 2016 Ethel Turner Prize for Young People's Literature, New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Her novels Hitler's Daughter and To the Moon and Back have been awarded the CBCA Children's Book of the Year Award in 2000 and 2005, and Pennies for Hitler won the 2013 New South Wales Premier's Young People History Award. Hitler's Daughter also won the UK Wow! Award, a Semi Grant Prix Japan Award and is listed as a blue ribbon book in the USA.

Her book, Hitler's Daughter, has been made into a stage play by Monkey Baa Theatre Company. It toured Australia in 2012 and in the United States in 2013. The play won the Robert Helpmann Award in 2007, the Drover Award in 2007 and the 2006 Drover Special Panel Award.

She studied the behaviour and ecology of wombats for 40 years and is the director of The Wombat Foundation, which raises funds for research into the preservation of wombats. She is also the ACT Children's Week Ambassador, 2011 Federal Literacy Ambassador, patron of Books for Kids, YESS, Speld ACT, Speld Qld, DAGS (Dyslexia Association Gawler), and joint patron of Monkey Baa Theatre for Young People with Susanne Gervais and Morris Gleitzman.

One of her more popular books, Diary of a Wombat, illustrated by Bruce Whatley, has been translated into 23 languages and is the only picture book to win the Australian Book Industry Award. It was also on The New York Times bestseller list. It has also won numerous awards including the 2002 Booksellers Choice Award, Canberra's Own Outstanding List Award for Best Picture Book (2003), 2003 KOALA Awards, Best Picture Book, The Children Book Council of Australia Books I Love Best Yearly Award (2008), the 2003 ABA/AA Nielsen Book of the Year Award, 2003 American Library Association, Notable Book title, 2003 USA Cuffie Awards, Favourite Picture Book of the Year and Funniest Book, 2003, 2004 USA Benjamin Franklin Award, 2004 USA Lemmee Award, 2004 USA KIND Award and the 2007 Kids Reading Oz Choice Favourite Book Award. French was the 2014-15 Australian Children's Laureate and was a finalist in the 2014 Nib Waverley Library Award for Literature Award.

In 1996, her sister Wendy vanished. She is presumed dead but her body has never been found. In 2003, Wendy's husband committed suicide during an investigation into his wife's disappearance.

French was born Jacqueline Ffrench in Sydney and grew up in Brisbane. Her parents divorced in 1967, and when her mother changed her surname from Ffrench to French, Jackie also did. In her early twenties she and her first husband moved to Araluen, near Braidwood, where she now lives with her second husband Bryan Sullivan. They have turned their property into a conservation refuge for the area's rare and endangered species.

Jacqueline French AM (born 29 November 1953 as Jacqueline Ffrench) is an Australian author who has written over 140 books and has won more than 60 national and international awards. She is considered one of Australia's most popular and awarded children's authors, writing across a number of children's genres including picture books, history, fantasy and history fiction.