Ann Jungmann was born in England of German Jewish refugee parents. She lived in Australia from 1987-1990 and since then has returned each year for between two and four months.
She has a law degree but while doing her legal training she began primary school teaching for an income. She decided that she preferred teaching to practising law, trained as a teacher, and taught for ten years. During this time she began to write for children, often to fill what she perceived as a gap in the market for books for the less motivated child. Since then she has published over a hundred books, her most popular ones being those about the vegetarian vampire, Vlad the Drac.
Since 1999 she has also been running Barn Owl Books, which is devoted entirely to republication of out-of-print children's books.