Born in Perth, Western Australia, Mel Tregonning was a published cartoonist since primary school and began a long-running comic strip in a national magazine at 16. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Design at Curtin University and won the international Illustrators of the Future competition in 2006. Tregonning ended her life at age 31, at the end of an acute period of depression. Her unfinished wordless comic Small Things, touching on the subject of depression and anxiety, was completed with the help of artist Shaun Tan and published in 2016 to critical acclaim.