Frank Moorhouse was born in the coastal town of Nowra, NSW. He worked as an editor of small-town newspapers and as an administrator and tutor for the Workers’ Educational Association, and in the 1970s became a full-time writer.

He has written prize-winning fiction, non-fiction and essays. He is best known for the highly acclaimed Edith trilogy, Grand Days, Dark Palace and Cold Light, novels that follow the career of an Australian woman in the League of Nations in the 1920s and 1930s through to the International Atomic Energy Agency in the 1970s.

Frank has been awarded a number of fellowships, including writer-in-residence at King's College, Cambridge, a Fulbright Fellowship and a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. His work has been translated into several languages.

He was made a member of the Order of Australia for services to literature in 1985, and was made a Doctor of the University by Griffith University in 1997 and a Doctor of Letters (honoris causa) by the University of Sydney in 2015.