Tara Moss

"Tara Moss exudes the air of a dangerous gun-toting dame in a modern-day film-noir thriller."

Tara Moss is an author, journalist, TV presenter and human rights advocate. Since 1999 she has written 10 bestselling books, published in 19 countries and 13 languages, including the acclaimed Mak Vanderwall crime fiction series and the Pandora English series. Her first non-fiction book, the critically acclaimed The Fictional Woman, was published in 2014 and became a number one national non-fiction bestseller, and her iconic cover design, featuring her face labeled with ‘fictions’ or stereotypes about women won Best Non-Fiction Book Design at the Australia Book Design Awards in 2015 with HarperCollins Publishers. She is a PhD Candidate at the University of Sydney, and has earned her private investigator credentials (Cert III) from the Australian Security Academy.

Her non-fiction writing has appeared in The Australian Literary Review, Vogue, ELLE, The Australian Women's Weekly, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian, among other publications.

Moss is an outspoken advocate for the rights of women and children. She has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2007 and as of 2013 is UNICEF Australia’s National Ambassador for Child Survival, and has visited Australian hospitals, maternity wards and schools as well as Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon in her UNICEF role. Moss has spoken at numerous schools on cyberbullying and online child safety, and in July 2015 was announced as the new Norton Family Ambassador on these issues. In 2015 she was also announced as Patron of the Full Stop Foundation for Rape & Domestic Violence Services Australia, and launched the foundation at Parliament House. In 2015 she received an Edna Ryan Award for her significant contribution to feminist debate, speaking out for women and children and inspiring others to challenge the status quo.

Her in-depth novel research has seen her tour the FBI Academy at Quantico, spend time in squad cars, morgues, prisons, the Hare Psychopathy Lab, the Supreme Court and criminology conferences, take polygraph tests, shoot weapons, conduct surveillance, pass the Firearms Training Simulator (FATSII) with the LAPD, pull 4.2 G’s doing loops over the Sydney Opera House flying with the RAAF, and acquire her CAMS race driver licence. She has hosted the true crime documentary series Tough Nuts – Australia’s Hardest Criminals on the Crime & Investigation Network, Tara Moss Investigates on the National Geographic Channel and the author interview show Tara in Conversation on 13th Street Universal. In 2014 she was recognised for Outstanding Advocacy for her blog Manus Island: An insider’s report, which helped to break information to the public about the events surrounding the alleged murder of Reza Barati inside the Australian-run Manus Island Immigration Detention Centre.

(*Moss's novels have so far been published in the USA, Canada, UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Germany, France, Russia, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Croatia, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.)

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