AustLit

Best known as a journalist and columnist, Deirdre Macken wrote on business and marketing for The Australian 1975-1979, worked for The Age 1979-1987 and was a senior writer on The Sydney Morning Herald and its Good Weekend from 1987-1999. She has since been a columnist and senior writer for The Australian Financial Review. She has been a volunteer member of the volunteer bushfire brigade.

In 2003 she was the EU Journalist of the Year, travelling to various parts of Europe to look at how regions rejuvenate their economies and societies.

Herself the mother of three children, Macken has also published a book on Australia's diminishing birthrate, Oh No, We Forgot to Have Children! How Declining Birth Rates Are Reshaping Our Society (2005).