Website: vickihastrich.com

Vicki Hastrich

Vicki Hastrich is a Sydney writer. Her two novels, Swimming with the Jellyfish (Allen & Unwin 2001) and The Great Arch (Allen & Unwin 2008) were followed by her memoir, Night Fishing: Stingrays , Goya and the Singular Life (Allen & Unwin 2019). She started out with the ABC as a TV camera operator and became an assistant director in drama. Writing in The Times Literary Supplement, critic Beejay Silcox called Night Fishing, ‘The literary equivalent of a glass-bottomed boat, a frame for wonderment’.

Vicki's new biography, The Last Days of Zane Grey : the untold story of a Hollywood legend in Australia and his hunt for the great white shark (Allen & Unwin 2025) examines the extraordinary life of the American western writer, celebrity and big game fisherman via the unknown story of Zane Grey’s two trips to Australia in the 1930s.

Praise for The Last Days of Zane Grey:

‘This swashbuckling tale has it all: encrypted letters, love quadrangles, high society hi-jinks, very big fish, cinematic fiascos and a man in duel with death itself’ - The Guardian

‘Utterly absorbing! Vicki Hastrich’s deeply perceptive of writer Zane Grey recover a kind of twentieth century Captain Ahab in a rip-roaring tale of obsession, money and high adventure.’ - Grace Karskens, Emeritus Professor of History and author of People of the River.