About
Hello! Welcome to my website. I’m Stephanie Wood, a journalist and author based in Sydney, Australia.
I wrote a book called Fake: A Startling True Story of Love in a World of Liars, Cheats, Narcissists, Fantasists and Phonies – the true story of a lousy time in my life with a man who turned out to be a most accomplished liar and fabulist. The Guardian named it one of its Unmissable Books for 2019. My friend Kate McClymont, the incredible Sydney Morning Herald investigative reporter, said: “Fake is a breathtakingly honest and beautifully written account of the emotional wreckage caused by fraudsters of the heart.”
My book has now been turned into an eight-episode Australian television series on Paramount+ (also called Fake) starring Asher Keddie and David Wenham. The Sydney Morning Herald says of the series: “One of the best Australian dramas of the decade so far, Fake is an unflinching examination of deception’s cruel grip.”
I worked with the much-loved documentary program, ABC Australian Story, to create a program which reflects the flood of responses I received to my story from hundreds of women who have had similarly devastating relationships with these types of romantic fraudsters. You can watch it here or here.
But Fake is only a small part of who I am and what I do.
Subscribe to my Substack email newsletter for my reflections on life in all its imperfection and in which I also share important human stories; introduce you to creative, wise, surprising, unconventional, fierce, decent, substantial people; inspire you with explorations into the infinite possibilities of creativity, curiosity, audacity and adventure (rafting down the Franklin River anyone? mudlarking and beachcombing … forest bathing … basket weaving … potato growing…..!); and give you insights into how to find purpose, meaning and joy in this fragile, precious, difficult world.
I also write for publications including Good Weekend magazine (published with The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald each Saturday), The Guardian and Vogue. I’ve explored subjects including the TikTok generation, artificial intelligence, the dire threats facing koalas, dog parks, Kyle Sandilands and Joel Edgerton, fierce women firefighters, pretty dancing spiders, questionable conduct among Australians working in Cambodia’s NGO sector, beach maximalism and a real estate assault on my mother
I’ve also won a couple of awards – for my Good Weekend story about Melbourne’s 2016 thunderstorm asthma epidemic (the Jim Oram Award for Outstanding Feature Writing in the NRMA Kennedy Awards) and for an article about the prescription opioid epidemic (the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists Media Award).
I’m interested in telling important human stories which explore issues of social justice and love to dig into the complexities and craziness of living in the 21st century.
In a former life I was a food writer and restaurant reviewer. I still like to eat, enthusiastically.