Author Profile
I’ve been writing in some form or other, for most of my life. My novel, Light and Shadow, published in 2025, has a dual timeline, and is based on the life of the photographer Eadweard Muybridge; I’m now working on a book of short stories entitled Repentance and compiling an anthology of horse poetry. In the past few years I’ve also been enjoying making some video/poetry films with Australian video filmmaker Marie Craven. My poetry has been published in various magazines and newspapers, including 5 Islands Press and The Weekend Australian. I review books regularly for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and my feature stories appear regularly in a variety of magazines and newspapers, including the Good Weekend magazine.
Light and Shadow - The story of Eadweard Muybridge, Flora Shallcross Stone and Harry Larykns, as told by their granddaughter, Rosa Maria de Martinez
Mini Synopsis
When the world-famous photographer Eadweard Muybridge (the first person to prove that when a horse gallops there is a moment when all four hooves are in the air) shot dead his wife’s lover and was acquitted of murder on the grounds of ‘justifiable homicide’, it was one of the greatest scandals of the 19th century. Light and Shadow is a rich reimagining of this true story and its repercussions.
Muybridge's actions ricochet down into the next generations, leaving his granddaughter, Rosa to untangle a web of deceit that haunts her throughout her entire life. Writing her story for Beth, a younger friend, Rosa comes to understand that it is the family she loves, not the family she was born into, who give her the chance to make peace with the demons of her past.
From England to Mexico, to America and finally to Australia's Snowy Mountains, Light and Shadow traverses both physical and emotional landscapes with searing intensity as it wrestles with questions of identity and belonging, women’s power and how the past impinges on the present.
Testimonials:
‘No one writes about ‘the immigrant's malaise, the strange uncertainty of constant, inevitable yearning…’ better than Candida Baker. Every migrant or reader temporarily bereft of a place of belonging will find understanding in the stories she weaves of those whose wanderlust or fates finds them far from home. Also the solace that, if the vulnerability, (particularly for women) doesn’t kill them, another tribe and place will ultimately find them.’
Rachel Ward
‘Light and Shadow is the most intimate of novels, a book to be kept on your bedside table. Baker’s power and truth as a describer of women’s longing, desire and sexual love is second to none. She is truly a literary descendant of Marguerite Duras.’
Sue Woolfe
‘The vision for Candida Baker’s Light and Shadow remains as important now as it did two hundred years ago for Flora Shallcross Stone: to bring to light from shadow the sovereign voices of women across the ages, and to keep alive all conversations and stories that seek to rebalance the presence of females in history and to reignite the often-wavering but bright creative female spark.’
Sally Colin-James, author of One Illumined Thread
The Heart of a Horse
Testimonial from Geraldine Brooks: ‘Who rescues, and who is rescued? This is the question that hovers in The Heart of a Horse. Tender and sometimes tragic, this is a book of love stories with much to say about the human heart, and how it expands through intimate relationships with our planet’s other animals - furred, feathered and hooved.’
Published by Murdoch Books in Australia and the UK 2021
‘Wanderings’ - 2018
Photographs by Ken Ball, poems by Candida Baker
Belinda the Ninja Ballerina - 2016 (children’s book)
Review: “This book is a delight, something any mother can read with her little girl and remember her own childhood. And lucky Candida Baker, having Mitch Vane to do her art! This artist is perfect for this kind of book.” Sue Bursztynski
MA Thesis University of Adelaide graduated 2016
‘An exploration of kijin – or eccentricity – and its traditions as an endorsed quality in Japanese art, with specific reference to the work of Yayoi Kusama and Yoko Ono.’
Editor & Contributor – 2015
Gabori – the Corrigan Collection of Sally Gabori paintings, Macmillan – 2015
Anthologies 1996 - 2012
The Wisdom of Women, Allen & Unwin – 2012
The Mysterious Life of Cats, Allen & Unwin – 2011
The Wonderful World of Dogs, Allen & Unwin – 2010
The Infinite Magic of Horses, Allen & Unwin – 2009
The Penguin Book of the Horse – UK 1997
The Penguin Book of the Horse – 1996
The Hidden – 2000 (novel)
Reviews
‘A rich and fluid exploration of the way the past haunts the present…a compelling, thoughtful work.’ The Sydney Morning Herald.
‘…fascinating reading…Baker’s writing is at once sharp and insightful.’ Herald Sun.
‘…a delicious mystery that visits not only a menacing and wild Australian landscape, but the ravaged emotional landscape. The plot itself is dramatic, but a finely-wrought emotional narrative curves its way around it beautifully.’ The Daily Telegraph.
The Hidden, which included Candida Baker’s photographs, was published by Knopf to critical acclaim.
The Powerful Owl - 1994 (short stories)
Reviews
‘Baker writes in a racily knowing tone, self-mocking, rueful and rude all at once, as if a Fay Weldon plot were written with the dark hilarity of Alice Thomas Ellis.’ The Sydney Morning Herald.
‘Baker’s strength as a writer is her ability to evoke feelings to a considerable degree of intensity and to structure her work so that you can’t put the book down.’ The Australian.
The Powerful Owl was published by Picador. The title story was runner-up in the Canberra Times short story competition and has been included in numerous anthologies. The book was also runner up in the Steele Rudd short story award.
Women and Horses - 1990
Reviews
‘There are at least two kinds of past in Candida Baker’s novel Women and Horses…both are described with sharp, comic anguish.’ The Melbourne Herald.
Women and Horses was a runner-up in the prestigious Vogel Australian Literary Award in 1990. It was published as a hard-back Picador in Australia and in the U.S by St. Martin’s Press.
The Yacker Series – 1985-1995
In 1985 I embarked on a ten-year writing project, interviewing a total of 36 writers for my Yacker – Australian Writers Talk About Their Work series, based on the Paris Review interviews with writers, and published by Picador. I conducted interviews with writers such as Peter Carey, David Malouf, Helen Garrner, Kate Grenville, Randolph Stowe, Peter Porter, and in New York Sumner Locke Elliott.
Children’s books
The Little Angels Counting Book published by Penguin – 1992
I Know That, published by Box Press - 1996
Belinda the Ninja Ballerina published by Ford Street Publishing -2015.
Bibliography
Non-fiction: Yacker - Australian Writers Talk About Their Work,
Vols 1, 2 & 3, published Picador 1986, 1989, 1990 and Picador UK.
Fiction: Women and Horses, novel, Australia, Picador 1990; U.S, St. Martin's Press 1990.
Essay: Six Characters in Search of an Author - a treatise on Pirandello and creativity, Island Magazine 1991.
Fiction: The Powerful Owl, short stories, Picador 1994.
Essay: ‘The Myth of Romantic Love’, in Loves, editor Jean Bedford, Angus & Robertson 1995.
Children’s book: The Baby Angel Counting Book, Penguin, 1994.
Short story: ‘The Powerful Owl’ included in 65-95 Contemporary Classics, editor Don Anderson, Vintage, 1995.
Short story: ‘The Canvas’, Included in anthology Women, Love Sex, editor Susan Johnson, Vintage, 1996.
Editor: anthology: The Penguin Book of the Horse, published Penguin 1996.
Short story: ‘The Cut’, The Penguin Book of the Horse, editor Candida Baker, published Penguin 1996.
Essay: ‘Dear Daddy’, Fathers in Writing, editor Ross Fitzgerald, University of Western Australia Press, 1997.
Short Story: ‘City Lights’, in The Penguin Book of the City, editor Robert Drewe, Penguin 1997.
Children’s book: I Know That, published Box Press 1998.
Novel: The Hidden, published Knopf 2000
Short story, ‘Spindrift’, The Penguin Book of the Beach, Penguin 2001.
Non-fiction: The Hollow Crown - an essay on travelling with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Sunday Magazine 2002.
The Powerful Owl included in the Penguin Century of Australian stories, Penguin Books, 2000.
Anthology: The Infinite Magic of Horses, published Allen & Unwin (Inspired Living) 2009.
Anthology: The Wonderful World of Dogs, published Allen & Unwin (Inspired Living) 2010.
Anthology: The Amazing Life of Cats, published Allen & Unwin (Inspired Living) 2011.
Anthology: The Wisdom of Women, published Allen & Unwin (Inspired Living) 2012.
Non-fiction: Editor and contributor to Sally Gabori – a Life, profile of Sally Gabori in Gabori: The Sally Gabori Collection of Patrick Corrigan. Published Macmillan, 2015.
Children’s Book: Belinda the Ninja Ballerina, Ford Street Publishing, 2015.
Photography & poetry book: Wanderings with Ken Ball, published by Impressions Plus 2018.
Memoir: The Heart of a Horse - Life lessons from horses and other animals, Murdoch Books 2021
Novel: Light and Shadow, published by Fair Play Books (Popcorn Press), 2025