Sienna Brown - Author

Makeup and photo - Jack Chesher

Sienna Brown was born in Kingston, Jamaica, grew up in Toronto, Canada and now lives in Sydney, Australia.

In Canada, she was a professional dancer with Toronto Dance Theatre, Canada’s premiere contemporary dance company.

She’s a graduate of the prestigious Australian Film & TV School (AFTRS) where she gained a BA in television directing and editing. After graduating, she formed Pine Street Films, through which she produced, directed and wrote award winning documentaries and educational films.

Her debut novel Master of My Fate, published in 2019 by Penguin Random House, won the MUD Literary Prize at Adelaide Writers Week for the best debut novel by an Australian writer and was shortlisted for the ARA Historical Fiction Novel Prize, in 2020.

In conjunction with Dr Ben Etherington, she was commissioned by ABC Radio National, the History Listen Series to create Caribbean Convicts in Australia, a podcast based on her research for Master, broadcast November, 2021.

In 2022, she was appointed Research Associate at Western Sydney University. Her position is being funded by a three-year Australia Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project Grant administered through the Writing & Society Research Centre.

Under the auspices of the grant, along with Ben, she developed and co-produced

Callaloo & Wattleseed, a unique one-day symposium, that focused for the first time on the cultural contributions of Caribbean Australians, in the arena of music, education, literature and performance. She is also currently working with The History Lab at UTS’s Impact Studios to produce further podcasts on the history of Caribbean people in Australia.

Sienna has just completed her second historical fiction novel: Secrets of the Monkey House. Set in 1930s Kingston, Jamaica and Saint Ann’s Bay, the novel follows 16-year-old Grace Stanton, a mixed-race girl caught between the opulence of her father’s world and the harsh realities of the black working class. When she falls for Lucas, a passionate young printer from the wrong side of town, she’s thrust into a maelstrom of political unrest, racial division, and a hidden legacy tied to Jamaica’s Indigenous Taino people. As ancestral memories awaken within her, Grace, caught between the fractured pieces of her identity, must choose between her heart, her heritage, and a future shaped by forces far beyond her control. At the heart of the novel is a forbidden love, a buried legacy, and a reckoning with identity—personal, cultural, and national.

Sienna is proud to be represented by Gaby Naher of The Naher Agency

Member of ASA
The Australian Society of Authors acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, the Traditional Owners of the land on which we meet and work, and all Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia. We recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' continuing connection to land, place, waters and community. We pay our respects to their cultures, country and elders past present and emerging. The ASA respects Australia's first storytellers.

Sienna Brown was born in Kingston, Jamaica, grew up in Toronto, Canada and now lives in Sydney, Australia.

In Canada, she was a professional dancer with Toronto Dance Theatre, Canada’s premiere contemporary dance company.

She’s a graduate of the prestigious Australian Film & TV School (AFTRS) where she gained a BA in television directing and editing. After graduating, she formed Pine Street Films, through which she produced, directed and wrote award winning documentaries and educational films.

​