Mark Ragg has worked as doctor and as a journalist with the Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald. Following a period as a volunteer doctor in East Timor, Ragg contracted encephalitis; his recovery was complicated by further illness and led to a significant period of ill-health. Ragg was off work for two years and eventually took a redundancy from the Sydney Morning Herald. Since then he has run a writing and editing business, taught in a public health department at the University of Sydney and sat on a mental health tribunal. In addition to poetry and fiction, Ragg has written several non-fiction books on medical topics.
