Susan Addison has worked as a journalist and editor in Australia and internationally. She has taught editing skills at university level and wrote A Good Plain Cook: An Edible History of Queensland (1999). The death of Addison's son, Charlie, to cancer in 1995 inspired the collection of stories Mother Lode (2001). Rex Addison, her husband and Charlie's father, produced a series of linocut prints to accommpany the stories.