Rachael Craw was born and raised in Christchurch. She completed a degree in Classical Studies and Drama at the
University of Canterbury and then trained as a secondary school teacher After the
2010 Canterbury earthquake and
2011 Christchurch earthquake, Rachael and her husband and three daughters stayed in their home in a red-zoned street in Christchurch for two years before moving to Nelson. Rachael describes herself as being fascinated with words from an early age, and remembers being thrilled to receive her first lockable diary. She has kept journals for many years and was naturally drawn to poetry and scriptwriting. Her interest in and love for the spoken word have developed into a passion for creating good dialogue, an aspect of writing that she enjoys the most. Before beginning the
Spark trilogy, she acted, directed and wrote for amateur theatre productions and small independent film ventures. Rachael then had a one-year deadline to write each of the next two books in the trilogy.
Auckland Writers Festival Schools Programme 2015,
WORD Christchurch Writers & Readers Festival 2016, Somerset Celebration of Literature, Queensland, 2017, State Library Victoria Reading Matters Conference and Regional Tour of Victoria, 2018 and the Storylines Auckland Story Tours 2018. She is active on social media and has the support of the #SparkArm] campaign of teen readers, started by a group of Australian YA book bloggers. Her character Jamie in
Spark was nominated for the Teencon Book Boyfriend Battle as part of Sydney's Writers Festival 2015. Her work has been compared to the worldwide hit series
The Hunger Games. She cites some of her own favourite authors as
Margaret Atwood,
Elizabeth Knox,
Kate Atkinson and
Maggie Stiefvater. == Awards and prizes ==