Sonya Bates

Sonya Bates is a Canadian writer and author who has made South Australia her home for many years. She writes for adults and children and her most recent published works include her debut adult novel Inheritance of Secrets (HarperCollins Australia 2020) and a middle grade science fiction adventure novel Out of This World (Wakefield Press 2023).

Sonya grew up in Victoria, Canada where she studied Linguistics at the University of Victoria before moving to the east coast to study Speech-Language Pathology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She worked in paediatric speech pathology and clinical education for over 30 years before retiring to focus on health and writing in 2022.

Sonya’s debut adult novel, Inheritance of Secrets, was shortlisted for the inaugural Banjo Prize in 2018 as an unpublished manuscript and was also shortlisted in the Davitt Awards 2021 for Best Debut Crime Novel. Sonya's children's novels have received many commendations from CCBC Best Books for Kids and Teens, and Oh Brother (Orca Book Publishers 2020) was shortlisted for the Speech Pathology Australia Book of the Year Award in 2020.

When not writing or reading, Sonya loves to travel, walk and collect new recipes. She lives in Adelaide with her husband, her devoted golden retriever and a very grumpy cat.