Rosalie Ham was born and raised in the Riverina, in southern NSW, and now lives in Brunswick, Victoria. She studied drama and literature before taking up writing seriously and has had written three stage plays and one radio play which were performed in Melbourne. The Dressmaker was her first novel. Published in 2000, it is a black comedy set in the 1950s about a woman who returns to her home town in Victoria to look after her dying mother, after years of living in Paris.