Born in Melbourne, Gillian Polack has a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours) in History from Melbourne University, a Master of Arts from the Centre for Medieval Studies (University of Toronto), a Doctor of Philosophy in History at the University of Sydney from the University of Sydney, teaching qualifications from the University of New England, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing from the University of Western Australia.
Polack researches food history, including teaching food history at the Australian National University. She has also been a columnist for the American online literary magazine BiblioBuffet, and has worked on the conference circuit, including WorldCon, Flycon (an online science-fiction convention), and Conflux. Her non-fiction includes scholarly work on the Middle ages, including Arthurian literature, food, and Jewish experiences in the medieval period.
Gillian Polack received a Macquarie Bank Fellowship and a Blue Mountains Fellowship to work on novels at Varuna writers' residence in the Blue Mountains. She has published a number of novels and short stories, and has also edited collections of speculative fiction.
In 2018, IFWG Published Australia announced that they would be publishing a new science-fiction novel by Polack, The Year of the Fruitcake, in the first quarter of 2019.
For works not individually indexed on AustLit, see notes below.