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Cover image courtesy of the author.
Kim Wilkins Kim Wilkins i(A51311 works by)
Also writes as: Kimberley Freeman ; Kimberley Wilkins
Born: Established: 1966 London,
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England,
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United Kingdom (UK),
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Western Europe, Europe,
;
Gender: Female
Arrived in Australia: ca. 1974
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BiographyHistory

Kim Wilkins is the daughter of Australian parents but lived in England until the age of four. She grew up in Redcliffe, Queensland and wrote her first novel at the age of nine. Wilkins played bass for the Vampigs and other rock bands and worked in a variety of jobs including fast food and typing.

Wilkins gained a first class honours degree in literature (1998), an MA (2000), and a Ph.D (2006) from The University of Queensland. Wilkins also won the University Medal for academic achievement in 1998. She has subsequently taught at The University of Queensland, where she was promoted to Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Arts in 2017. Her interests include medievalism, adaptation, speculative fiction, and creative uses of mythology.

Primarily an author of fantasy (including horror / dark fantasy) and contemporary epic women's fiction, Wilkins has published novels, children's literature, young-adult literature, novellas and short stories. Her women's fiction, under the pen-name Kimberley Freeman, often explores the struggles of women across disparate time periods. Her fiction is notable for strong, central female characters.

Wilkins' first novel, The Infernal , was published in 1997. Since then, she has published over twenty additional novels, including series for adults such as the Europa Suite and the Blood and Gold series, the Gina Champion Mystery paranormal mystery series for teenagers, and the Sunken Kingdom series for children, as well as a number of standalone novels, novellas (collected in The Year of Ancient Ghosts) and short stories.

She has been published in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Italy and Germany. Among her awards are five Aurealis Awards and a Ditmar Award.

She is the author of the AustLit scholarly bibliography Australian Popular Medievalism which identifies the ways that medieval themes have influenced popular Australian fiction. Read her introductory essay on the project, 'Bell, Book, and Battleaxe'. Wilkins is also a project leader in the Australian Popular Fictions Research Community for AustLit. In 2015, she began a long-term research project on the genre worlds of 21st-century Australian fiction with fellow researchers David Carter, Beth Driscoll, and Lisa Fletcher; a monograph stemming from this project was published with Driscoll and Fletcher in 2022. In 2021, she was the editor, with Samantha J. Rayner, of a collection of essays on influential Regency romance writer Georgette Heyer, Georgette Heyer, History, and Historical Fiction (UCL Press, 2021).


Australian Writing and Rock Music affiliation: bass.

Most Referenced Works

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Genre Worlds : Popular Fiction and Twenty-first-century Book Culture Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press , 2022 23592762 2022 multi chapter work criticism

'Works of genre fiction are a source of enjoyment, read during cherished leisure time and in incidental moments of relaxation. This original book takes readers inside popular genres of fiction, including crime, fantasy, and romance, to reveal how personal tastes, social connections, and industry knowledge shape genre worlds. Attuned to both the pleasure and the profession of producing genre fiction, the authors investigate contemporary developments in the field—the rise of Amazon, self-publishing platforms, transmedia storytelling, and growing global publishing conglomerates—and show how these interact with older practices, from fan conventions to writers’ groups.

'Sitting at the intersection of literary studies, genre studies, fan studies, and studies of the book and publishing cultures, Genre Worlds considers how contemporary genre fiction is produced and circulated on a global scale. Its authors propose an innovative theoretical framework that unfolds genre fiction’s most compelling characteristics: its connected social, industrial, and textual practices. As they demonstrate, genre fiction books are not merely texts; they are also nodes of social and industrial activity involving the production, dissemination, and reception of the texts.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

2023 shortlisted ASAL Awards Walter McRae Russell Award
The Cunning Woman's Daughter 2017 single work short story fantasy
— Appears in: The Silver Well 2017; (p. 131-170)
2017 shortlisted Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction Fantasy Division Novella
My Sister's Ghost 2017 single work short story fantasy
— Appears in: The Silver Well 2017; (p. 69-100)
2018 shortlisted Ditmar Awards Best Novella or Novelette

Known archival holdings

Full description available at http://www.library.uq.edu.au/fryer/ms/uqfl396.pdf University of Queensland University of Queensland Library (QLD)
Last amended 30 May 2023 14:38:13
Influence on:
The Australian Writers Marketplace Andrew Last , 2012 single work poetry
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