After his unpublished novella about a lovestruck teenager was shortlisted for The Australian/Vogel Literary Award in 1990, Richard McHugh completed his studies at Sydney and Yale, worked as an office angel in London and a Wall Street attorney in New York, and wintered with his partner and their baby in Utah. They now live in Bronte with an unexpectedly large number of children. When he is not driving two sons and two daughters around greater Sydney, he works as a barrister, makes photographs and writes. Madeleine's Monster is his second novel, after Charlie Anderson's General Theory of Lying.