Kate Grenville was born (1950) and educated in Sydney, then worked in the film industry as a documentary editor. More on her life and awards can be found on:
https://kategrenville.com.au/about/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Grenville

Some reviews of her books can be found on these links:
https://www.theguardian.com/profile/kate-grenville
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/aug/14/kate-grenville-on-colonist-john-macarthur-itd-be-nice-to-see-some-of-those-statues-toppled

Her books read collectively by the group are:

Lilian’s Story (1985).
The Secret River (2005)
Searching for the Secret River (2006)
Sarah Thornhill (2011)
One Life: My Mother’s Story (2015)
A Room Made with Leaves (2020)

In our discussions, three themes emerged . Firstly, as a feminist, Kate Grenville is interested in women and their life stories. This is particularly evident when she writes of women in the early history of Australia whose lives were not recorded in the newspapers and books, only those of men. She uncovers their hidden stories.

Secondly, she writes about the customs and stolen land of the indigenous Australians, and in particular when it was done so by famous early Australians and by ancestors of many current European Australians.

Lastly, she is known for her way of using fiction to write about Australian history. She suggested in a lecture that the fiction writer is like a person perched on a step ladder looking down on events from above. Some historians have had difficulties with her theory but Kate would answer that there are different perceptions of ‘truth’. Commenting on her book A Room Made with Leaves she noted ‘Misinformation, fakery, lies for commercial or political gain: this is the toxic air we breathe daily. How to sort out the true from the dangerously fake – in fact, even to remember that sorting has to be done – is the challenge. We’re living through a time in which lies and deception have a reach and power and effectiveness that’s unprecedented’.

The same book has as its epigraph ‘Do not believe too quickly’. A Guardian review notes that the epigraph ‘issues a warning that resonates thoughout the novel as Kate Grenville invites the reader to reflect on the complex relationship between truth and falsehood, history and fiction’. She said ‘ Every writer has to come to their own place of comfort when writing about history, writing about people who are not themselves; the danger of appropriating and blundering into something you don’t know enough about.’