About Jane Harper
Author
Jane Harper is the author of bestsellers The Dry, Force of Nature, The Lost Man, The Survivors, Exiles and Last One Out. Her books are published in 40 territories worldwide, with more than 3.5 million copies sold to date.
Jane has won numerous awards for writing, including the CWA Gold Dagger Award for Best Crime Novel, the British Book Awards Crime and Thriller Book of the Year, the Australian Book Industry Awards Book of the Year and the Australian Indie Awards Book of the Year.
Screen
Three of Jane's novels have been adapted for screen. The major motion picture adaptation of The Dry, starring Eric Bana as Aaron Falk, took more than $20.5m at the Australian box office on its release in 2021. Co-starring Genevieve O'Reilly, Keir O'Donnell and John Polson, it is No.15 on Screen Australia's list of highest grossing Australian films of all time.
Bana returned for Force of Nature: The Dry 2, which was filmed in regional Victoria in winter, 2022 and released in cinemas in 2024. It co-starred Anna Torv, Deborra-lee Furness, Robin McLeavy, Sisi Stringer, Lucy Ansell and Jacqueline McKenzie.
The Survivors was adapted for a six-part Netflix series, which was released in 2025 and starred Charlie Vickers, Yerin Ha, Robyn Malcolm and Damien Garvey.
The latest...
Jane's sixth novel, Last One Out, was NielsenIQ Bookscan's Australia Christmas #1 for 2025; it debuted at No.1 on the Australian charts on its release in October. The standalone novel is due to be released in the United States and United Kingdom this April.
Background
Jane was born in Manchester in the UK, and moved to Australia with her family at age eight. She spent six years in Boronia, Victoria, and during that time gained Australian citizenship.
Returning to the UK with her family as a teenager, she lived in Hampshire before studying English and History at the University of Kent in Canterbury.
On graduating, she completed a journalism entry qualification and got her first reporting job as a trainee on the Darlington & Stockton Times in County Durham.
Jane worked for several years as a senior news journalist for the Hull Daily Mail, before moving back to Australia in 2008.
She worked first on the Geelong Advertiser, and in 2011 took up a business reporting role in Melbourne.
In 2014, Jane submitted a short story which was one of 12 chosen for the Big Issue's annual Fiction Edition.
That inspired her to pursue creative writing more seriously, breaking through with The Dry at the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards in 2015.
Jane lives in bayside Melbourne with her husband and their two children.
Praise for Jane
"Harper has made her own major mark" New York Times
"One of the finest novelists now working" New Zealand Herald
"Harper has a fine gift for making her readers comfortable in inhospitable territory – psychological as well as physical" Daily Telegraph (UK)
"Storytelling at its finest" Associated Press
"All at once enthralling … Book by book, [Harper is] creating her own vivid and complex account of the outback" New York Times Book Review
"Queen of outback noir" Sunday Times
"Harper is wonderful at evoking fear and unease" The Times