Emma Pignatiello wrote her debut romantic suspense novel, Last Shot, because not enough people were being murdered in the romance books she was reading. She lives by the coast in Western Australia near Walyalup (Fremantle) on the land of the Whadjuk Noongar people. In disguise at her day job, she attempts to make teenagers care more about writing than about how many days she’s worn her cringe millennial shoes in a row. Emma is dedicated to making her stories authentic – she frequented many wineries in the name of research for the Blood Wine Dynasty series but has not (yet) committed any murders.

Last Shot won the CYA 2022 Conference Competition in the ‘adult genre’ category and was long-listed for the 2024 Adaptable Program. Emma was selected as a the ‘Upcoming’ Writer in Residence at the Katharine Susannah Pritchard Writers’ Centre for 2025. Her YA fantasy novel The Bone Painter won the 2020 Varuna/ Affirm Press Mentorship Award and her adult crime novel If One of Us is Dead was selected for the Four Centres Emerging Writers Program (2021-2023). Her work has been published in the Three Can Keep a Secret Anthology by Night Parrot Press and also in many long-winded birthday cards that she forces upon her friends every year.

Besides writing, her hobbies include defending Taylor Swift to all non-believers, painting characters from her favourite books and eating Nutella straight from the jar.