Rachael King was born in New Zealand in 1970 to a bookish family – her father Michael King (who died in 2004) was one of New Zealand’s most prominent authors, and her mother Ros Henry is a publisher.

After finally gaining her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Auckland she began working in radio, hosting an arts programme on 95bFM and selling advertising, a career she continued through magazines, and which funded her growing passion for writing fiction.

Rachael completed a Masters in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Wellington’s Victoria University in 2001 and began work on The Sound of Butterflies (2006). In 2007 it won the Montana New Zealand Book Award for Best First Novel and it has been translated into nine languages. Another novel for adults, Magpie Hall, was published in New Zealand in November 2009 to critical acclaim.

Rachael King’s first novel for children was released in 2012. Red Rocks tells the story of Jake, who finds a sealskin and takes it home and hides it under his bed, unleashing an ancient spell that threatens to destroy his family. A retelling of the Celtic selkie myth, the idea came to Rachael as she walked her first baby son around Wellington’s wild south coast and thought it a place where magic could happen. Rachael now lives in Christchurch with her husband and two young sons.