AustLit

Dianne Wolfer grew up in Melbourne, and has lived in Thailand, Nepal and Japan. After gaining her teaching qualifications at Curtin University, she worked as a teacher with the Western Australian Education Department 1984-87 and again in 1991-92, after using her Japanese language qualifications to teach at the American School in Japan 1988-90. She also used her language proficiency to teach Japanese to airline employees. She taught in Nepal and travelled through Asia. When she returned to settle in WA, she began writing short stories and articles for magazines. Her time in Japan is reflected in her writings which show the influence of Japanese No plays and haiku (which she has also written). Dolphin Song (1995) was her first published novel. Wolfer has taught vocational English at the Denmark (WA) Agricultural College. An active branch member of the Society of Women Writers, the Fellowship of Australian Writers, the Children's Book Council and the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, she has run workshops and addressed schools and writers festivals about children's literature and writing. Her membership of Amnesty International and the Australian Conservation Foundation is reflected in her focus on writing about the contrasting cultures of Australia and the Pacific, and her concern about human and nature interaction. She has written short stories to accompany the Southern Forest Sculpture Walk in the Northcliffe Jubilee Park in south west WA for Southern Forest Arts.

Wolfer has also written readers for the Thomson Learning PM Plus series. She won the 1995 South-West Literary Award for her one-act play Christmas Lunch, and the 1997 FAW Mary Grant Bruce unpublished short story award for 'Donkey Ears'. In 2007 she received an ArtsWA grant to enable her to work on a picture book set in Albany during World War II about a girl on Breaksea Island.

Wolfer received a PhD from University of Western Australia on Anthropomorphism in Children's Literature, which resulted in two novels The Shark Caller and The Dog with Seven Names.