Bronwyn Rivers grew up in Newcastle, New South Wales with the mystery-novel gateway drugs of The Famous Five and Trixie Belden, before developing a solid addiction to Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and PD James. She moved to the UK to take a doctorate on nineteenth-century women's novels at Oxford, and was an academic researcher and book reviewer in England and Australia, before admitting that she actually wanted to write the fiction rather than analyse it.

When not reading or writing novels, she tries to spend as much time as possible walking or swimming in the Australian natural landscapes that form the settings for her work. This usually requires an excursion from her home in inner Sydney, where she now lives with her husband and two children.