Lauren Wilkinson-Barnes was born in 1967 and grew up in Sydney, Australia. A competitive swimmer, in 1985 Lauren represented her country at the Australia Games and the inaugural Pan Pacific Games in Tokyo. Lauren became a Primary School Teacher in 1995 and is currently pursuing this career full time in Goulburn. Lauren wrote her first book, Smashed to Pieces in 2010 in response to a life crisis that required all that she had to survive. In 2013, she wrote the sequel, Piece by Piece and has plans to continue the series. One day, time allowing, she would like to write a fiction novel. Lauren has 4 sons and lives in the beautiful Southern Highlands, surrounded by kangaroos, ducks, chooks, cows and kookaburras.