Jill Lawless began her career in journalism as a music writer, confidently predicting that a little-known French-Canadian singer named Celine Dion would never go anywhere. She moved on to become a leading Toronto theatre critic (1991-1997) and was dubbed 'a blonde monument to banality' by a prominent director.

After that she jumped at the chance to live in Ulaanbaatar (1997-1999), the world's coldest and remotest capital city. Lawless spent two years in Mongolia, a country trading in stifling Stalinism for slapdash capitalism, hoping to swap Ladas and Lenin for Mercedes and the IMF - and ending up with Russian Coke and Chinese Marlboros, all the while trying to cling to its Buddhist and nomadic roots.

During her time in Mongolia, Lawless was stranded in the Gobi desert, thrown from a succession of horses, x-rayed, mugged and forced to eat mutton; she traveled thousands of miles by jeep, Toyota Landcruiser, rusting Russian airplane, horse and camel.

She also edited the country's only independent English-language newspaper, the UB Post, and supplied articles on Mongolia to Agence France-Presse, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the Guardian, Deutsche Welle radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

She lives with her husband in London and works as a journalist (click here to read some of her dispatches).

You can also read more about Jill and see another photo of the elusive author at Summersdale Publishers.