Underground

About the Author

Mirranda Burton was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1973. She became a printmaker at the age of ten, a dedicated marimba player in her teens, and a Super 8 stop motion filmmaker at 21. She graduated from the North Adelaide School of Art in South Australia in 1995 with an Advanced Diploma, and in 2004 finished a Bachelor of Multimedia Design at Swinburne University in Melbourne. Working for many years in commercial and independent animation and as a visual artist was the catalyst for making graphic novels, and in 2011 her first book, Hidden, was published by Black Pepper Publishing. Hidden was also released in French under the title Caches by La Boite a Bulles.

In 2011 Mirranda became artist in residence for two years at Dunmoochin in Australian artist Clifton Pugh's former studio. During this residency she also learned of the Pughs' wombat, who was registered for military service in Vietnam in 1972, which started a long investigation into Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, resulting in her graphic novel Underground: Marsupial Outlaws and Other Rebels of Australia's War in Vietnam.

The book was completed in a little shack in bushland north-east of Melbourne shared with a number of recalcitrant wombat tenants under the floorboards. In her spare time Mirranda reads, finds new spaces to grow plants, and tries to occasionally practise her marimba.