Meaghan Delahunt was born and educated in Melbourne. She was influenced by feminist thought at an early age and was actively involved in the Socialist Workers' Party while attending Melbourne University. Soon after breaking with the party in the 1980s she visited an exhibition of Frida Kahlo's paintings and began to think about Leon Trotsky's assassination in Mexico and his relationship to Kahlo and Diego Rivera. She expressed these thoughts in poetry, short fiction and eventually a novel, The Blue House (2001). The Blue House is widely admired and has won several prizes, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the best new novel from the South-East Asia and South Pacific region. She has also received support from Melbourne University's Asialink Residency Program to conduct research in India.