Antonella Gambotto was born in Sydney, Australia, on the 19th of September, 1965. After Lindfield East Primary, she attended Killara High. She defied the expectation that she would study law and instead became a contributing writer for RAM, Stiletto, Billy Blue, and the Australian. Moving to London at the age of eighteen, she starved and worked for the New Musical Express, Sounds, Zig Zag, and the Daily Star. She has the distinction of having written the one piece over which the mild-mannered Cliff Richard took legal action. Mr Richard was gracious enough to later describe the review in question as brilliantly written and very funny.In 1988, she won the Cosmopolitan New Journalist of the Year Award in London and was accepted as a member of British Mensa. She returned to Australia in 1991 after working for the Independent, Cosmopolitan, and GQ. A guest commentator on SBS, the ABC, Foxtel, and Channel 9, Antonella has since worked for the Australian, Elle, GQ, HQ, Harper's Bazaar, Penthouse, Playboy, the Good Weekend, and the Sydney Morning Herald, as well as contributing essays and short stories to a number of anthologies and writing the afterword to Stan Zemanek's bestselling The Thoughts of Chairman Stan. Her work is part of various Australian university courses in nonfiction writing, media, and writing context and theory.
Antonella's first anthology, Lunch of Blood, was published in 1994. Her first novel, The Pure Weight of the Heart, was published internationally in 1998/9, and has just been released in Germany by DTV as Das Gewicht des Herzens. She is a regular cast member of Tropfest winner Paul Fenech's comedy series, Pizza, recently released a double CD set, It Takes Two, with renowned Australian clairvoyant, Alan Pilkington, and her second novel will be published in 2001. Currently working on her third, she struggles to raise awareness of coral bleaching in the two spare minutes she has each week. Wit and charm are two characteristics that Antonella has in spades, and these qualities are put on display in HarperCollins' An Instinct for the Kill, an anthology of interviews with subjects ranging from Warwick and Joanne Capper to the late King Hussein's daughter, Princess Haya bint al-Hussein. As Colleen McCullough will tell you, "Gambotto's integrity, adamantine wit, and ability to cut through the most elaborate psychological defence systems establishes her as one of the finest writers this country has ever produced. Her comic exertions at the expense of the unsuspecting left me sore with laughter."
