Christine Balint is the author of three novels. Most recently, Water Music won the 2021Viva la Novella Prize. Her first novel, The Salt Letters, was shortlisted for The Australian/ Vogel Literary Award, and was followed by Ophelia’s Fan. Her work has been publishedto critical acclaim in Australia, the United States, Germany and Italy, and she was namedone of Barnes & Noble’s Great New Writers in 2001. Christine holds a Bachelor of Arts(Honours) in English and Modern European Studies and has undertaken internationalarchival research in French, Italian and Hungarian. She has a PhD in Creative Arts fromthe University of Melbourne and has taught at the University of Melbourne and RMIT,and currently at La Trobe University. She is the daughter of Hungarian/Transylvanianrefugees and lives on Bunurong Land (the Mornington Peninsula) with her partner andtwo children.

'The evocative story of a vulnerable girl who refused to be silenced. Intimate, compelling, and atmospheric.'— Carrie Tiffany, Stella-Prize winning author of Mateship with Birds'A Single Witness is a beautifully crafted yet unflinching probe into an actual crime and its devastating aftermath in 1750s rural Italy. Told deftly and evocatively by a novelist of great skill, it is a deeply satisfying work of literary art, full of intense, almost hallucinatory detail as it goes straight to the heart of a village’s passions and deceits, and the indomitable spirit of the young woman whose life is turned upside down/torn apart.'— Garry Disher, bestselling author and three-time Ned Kelly Award winner