Doug MacLeod is a Melbourne writer of books and TV. In 2008 the Australian Writers' Guild awarded him the Fred Parsons award for contribution to Australian comedy. (He has worked as a writer on shows such as Fast Forward and SeaChange, and as script editor on three seasons of Kath and Kim.) He left his full-time TV job in 2002 to focus on writing books for children and young adults. He's since written six novels for Penguin, but his best-known title is probably Sister Madge's Book of Nuns, published by Omnibus Books. As Doug says, 'I found Sandy Okalyi's paintings of the spoonbills Mozzie and Midgie hard to resist. It struck me that the two main characters were in one of the most colourful places on earth - and yet they were black and white. I wondered how they would feel about that, which is how the story came about.'