Madeleine O’Dea is a writer with a 30-year background in journalism. Her memoir/history of post-Cultural Revolution China, The Phoenix Years, was published by Allen & Unwin, (Sydney, 2016) and by Pegasus Books (New York, 2017, 2018). Her work has also been recently featured in the book The Beijing Bureau, Hardie Grant, 2021, which tells the China story through the eyes of Australia's foreign correspondents. The Phoenix Years won the Alex Buzo Shortlist Prize at the 2017 Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Award, which honours excellence in literary research, and was long-listed for the 2017 Walkley Book Award. It was also chosen by the Grattan Institute for their 2016 Summer Reading List for the Prime Minister. Tom Keneally called The Phoenix Years "magnificent" saying "it's a wonderful thing where the essential book and the delightful book are, as in this case, the one thing" Madeleine is currently working on a new book and in association with that project was chosen by the Australia Council to be writer in residence at the Keesing Studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris from February to August 2019. In December 2021 she returned to the Cité for six months under their artist program to continue her work on the book. Madeleine began her professional career as a writer in 1986, when she went to Beijing as the correspondent for the Australian Financial Review newspaper. She subsequently covered China through the 1990s as a producer with ABC Television, while also covering stories from Australia and around the world for the Foreign Correspondent, 4 Corners, 7.30 Report, & Quantum programs. She was the founding editor-in-chief of Artinfo China and the Asia correspondent for Art + Auction and Modern Painters magazines. She has written for a range of other publications including the Guardian, The Art Newspaper, Bazaar Art, Orientations, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and The Australian.