Journalist and foreign correspondent, Madeleine O'Dea worked in China for three decades: after a period in Canberra with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, she joined the Australian Financial Review in the late 1980s as their Beijing correspondent. During the 1990s, she covered China as a producer for the ABC. In 2004, after moving to Beijing, she worked as a presenter and editor with China Radio International and then as arts editor for magazine The Beijinger. In 2010, she was founding editor of ARTINFO China and the Asia correspondent for Art+Auction and Modern Painters magazines. As of 2017, she lived in Sydney.
In 2017, she published The Phoenix Years: Art, Resistance, and the Making of Modern China, which was shortlisted for the Nib Award and longlisted for the Walkley Book Award.
