Amanda McKay was born in 1956 in Maffra, in the Gippsland area of Victoria, and moved to Adelaide in 1977. She has worked as a public servant, a youth worker and teacher.
A psychologist, she has worked for South Australia TAFE as a teacher of English as a second language, specifically using computers in content-based language teaching, presenting papers at conferences such as the Adult Migrant English Program National Conference, 2005.
She began writing for children after the birth of her daughter in 1987. Her writings include education programmes for migrants and scripts for the Channel 10 award winning children's television series Mulligrubs. She has also written works for the school reader series Literacy Links.