Justine Larbalestier

Justine Larbalestier ( ; born 1967 is an Australian writer of young adult fiction best known for her 2009 novel, Liar.

Personal life Larbalestier was born and raised in Sydney. She now alternates residence between Sydney and New York City.

In 2001 she married the American science fiction writer Scott Westerfeld, whom she met in New York City in 2000.

Selected works

YA Novels

Magic or Madness trilogy Magic or Madness (Penguin, 2005). Magic Lessons (Penguin, 2006). Magic's Child (Penguin, 2007). Other How to Ditch Your Fairy (Bloomsbury, 2008). Liar (Bloomsbury, 2009). Team Human (HarperTeen, 2012), Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan. Razorhurst (Allen & Unwin, 2014). My Sister Rosa (Soho Press, 2016).

Books edited

Zombies vs. Unicorns (Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2010), eds. Larbalestier and Holly Black.

Adult Novels The Mortons (with Scott Westerfeld) (Penguin Random House, upcoming, 2026)

Short fiction "The Cruel Brother" (2001), Strange Horizons, 22 October "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" (2004) in Agog! Smashing Stories (Agog! Press), ed. Cat Sparks "Elegy" (2019) in Foreshadow edited by Emily X R Pan and Nova Ren Sum "When I Was White" (2020) in Come On In edited by Adi Alsaid, Inkyard Press

Nonfiction "Ending the Battle of the Sexes? Hermaphroditism in 'Venus Plus X' by Theodore Sturgeon and 'Motherhood, Etc.' by L. Timmel Duchamp", The New York Review of Science Fiction, January 1997, pp. 14–16. The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction (Wesleyan University Press, 2002). Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century, edited (Wesleyan, 2006).

Awards

Magic or Madness won the 2007 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy—as the year's best book published in the US according to American speculative fiction writers. and won the 2014 Aurealis Award for Best Horror Novel.