Elizabeth Dines grew up in Adelaide during the 1950s. Mother of four, she studied and taught at Monash and Melbourne Universities, became a public servant in 1980 working in the fields of multicultural education and language policy, and in 1988 returned to Adelaide, taking up the post of Academic Registrar at the Adelaide University.
For many years she suffered recurring cancer. She retired due to ill health in 1994, believing that she had 'let workplace priorities take over to the extent that the real me has been stifled' (SoundingSophia no 3, 1994, p. 68) and seeing writing as 'an important part of the healing process, of becoming whole'.
