Hayli Thomson writes historical fiction about morally-grey women and their dark truths. She likes to think that her heroines are cut from the same cloth as her fifth great-grandmother, who, brought up against a slate of violent theft charges at London’s Old Bailey, remarked, ‘I have nothing to say,’ and was promptly First Fleet-ed off to Australia.

While studying for her master’s degree in literature, Hayli penned four Australian romance novels that won her a Golden Crown Literary Award and a Lambda Literary Award nomination. Infatuated with writing the past into the present, she set her 2022 debut young adult novel, The Comedienne’s Guide to Pride (Page Street U.S./HarperCollins AU/NZ), in Salem, Massachusetts.

She lives in Sydney, where she devotes far too much time to hunting through genealogy archives, devouring Anne Lister’s diaries, and scouring overgrown cemeteries for time-worn graves.

Her blood type is BBC literary adaptation-positive, and she’s never met a living history museum she didn’t like.

Her latest novel, a twisty retelling of the Jack the Ripper story, is coming up for submission in 2026.