Half a World Away

Libby Gleeson AM (born 1950) is an Australian children's author. Born in Young, New South Wales, she is one of six children, the sister of former ABC TV Washington Correspondent Michael Gleeson, and the mother of Home and Away actress Jessica Tovey and Sydney Morning Herald journalist Josephine Tovey. Her sister, Margie Gleeson, works as the head teacher of Creative and Performing Arts at Albury High School. She studied at the University of Sydney where she took history before teaching for two years in the rural town of Picton near Sydney. In the mid-1970s she lived for five years in Italy where she taught English and then London, where she began to write her first novel, Eleanor Elizabeth.