Francesca Rendle-Short grew up in Queensland, the fifth of six children. She has worked variously as a radio producer, teacher, editor, freelance writer and arts journalist. She is a novelist, author of the novel/memoir Bite Your Tongue (Spinifex Press), Imago (Spinifex Press), and Big Sister (Redress Novellas). She is also co-author with scriptwriter Felicity Packard (Underbelly, MDA, Home and Away) of the short play entitled Us. Her short fictions, photo-essays, exhibition text, and poetry for the page and for the wall, have been published in literary journals and magazines, online and in exhibitions.

Francesca has a Doctor of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong and is the Program Director of Creative Writing at RMIT University. She lives in Melbourne.