Born in Sydney, Falkiner grew up in western New South Wales. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New South Wales and later completed postgraduate courses in fiction, non-fiction and editing at Columbia University. In 2005 she was awarded a Doctorate of Creative Arts by the University of Technology, Sydney. After travelling extensively and working in various publishing and editing positions, she currently lives in Sydney and works as a full-time writer.[1][2]
Australian Aborigines: Shadows in a Landscape 1979 (with photographs by Laurence Le Guay): an essay on Aboriginal Australia
Australians Today 1985 (with photographs by Lorrie Graham): a portrait of multicultural Australia
Eugenia: A Man (1988) biography: the story of Eugenia Falleni, and the 'Man-Woman Case', about a transsexual accused of murder in 1920s Sydney. New edition with revisions and update chapter published by Xoum, Sydney, in 2014.
Ethel: A Love Story (1996) biography: a portrait of early 20th-century Australian society
Lizard Island: The Journey of Mary Watson (2001) biography, accompanied by a monograph on the artist Alan Oldfield and his narrative series of paintings 'The story of Mrs Watson 1881': explores the death of Mary Watson, her Chinese servant and her four-month-old baby son after their escape from Lizard Island in Far North Queensland, and the previously-unrecorded massacre of Aborigines that followed
Joan in India (2008) biography: the story of Joan Falkiner, an Australian woman who married the Muslim ruler H.H. Taley Muhammed Khan, the Nawab of Palanpur, in 1939, and lived with him in Gujarat throughout the period leading to Indian Independence
The Imago: E. L. Grant Watson & Australia (2011) biography, describes the Australian journeys of English biologist and writer Elliot Lovegood Grant Watson, and his subsequent works
Mrs Mort's Madness (2014), the true story of a Sydney scandal from 1920, involving the murder of Claude Tozer by his lover Dorothy Mort. Mort was found not guilty on the ground of insanity.
