Trudi Canavan is an Australian writer of fantasy novels, best known for her best-selling fantasy trilogies The Black Magician and Age of the Five. She was born in Kew, Melbourne, and grew up in Ferntree Gully, a suburb at the foothills of the Dandenongs.

While establishing her writing career, she worked as a graphic designer. In 1999, she won the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Short Story with "Whispers of the Mist Children". That same year, she was granted a writers residency at Varuna Writers’ Centre in Katoomba, New South Wales.

Her first published novel, The Magicians’ Guild, was released in November 2001 in Australia. It is the first book in The Black Magician Trilogy, followed by The Novice in June 2002, and The High Lord in January 2003. Both sequels were nominated for the Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel.

She completed her third trilogy, The Traitor Spy Trilogy, in August 2012 with the book The Traitor Queen. Subsequently, Canavan has written a series called Millennium's Rule, a new setting consisting of multiple worlds that characters can traverse. Although originally planned as a trilogy, a fourth and final book in the Millennium's Rule series was published.