Ian Townsend was born in country New South Wales, but he has spent much of the past 20 years in Queensland, and the past eight years in Brisbane.

He's been a newspaper and radio journalist for more than two decades. He is currently a Brisbane reporter ABC Radio National's Background Briefing award-winning radio documentary program.

Ian's won a number of awards for journalism, including two national Eureka Prizes, sponsored by the Australian Museum. In August 2005, he won the Pfizer Australia Eureka Prize for Health and Medical Research Journalism, and in 1999 won the Eureka for science, technology and engineering journalism.

Affection, his first novel, was published in May 2005 by Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. The Devil's Eye, also by Fourth Estate, was published in September 2008.