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about Rivqa...
Bio
Born in Jerusalem, Rivqa has lived in Australia since she was three. She could write before she could read and can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to be a writer. She was also fascinated by how the world works. When she was six her grandmother gave her a set of children’s encyclopaedias and she absorbed everything, from amoebas and dinosaurs to world history and how aeroplanes work.Throughout high school Rivqa continued pursuing her interests in the sciences and humanities, studying biology, chemistry, and psychology as well as literature and history. By sixteen she had written her first novel, and had helped write a script for a school play and founded a school newspaper.
At university level it seemed time to choose between science and writing, so Rivqa began a science degree at the University of Melbourne with a view to becoming a biotechnologist. Despite her scientific achievements during her Honours degree at the University of New South Wales, she realised that she had enjoyed the process of writing her thesis more than the actual research. Rivqa also found her experience with the university’s online science journal, OnSET, very rewarding.
Rather than continue with a career in research, Rivqa enrolled in a Masters in Professional Writing at the University of Technology, Sydney, and graduated in November 2005. She is now a freelance science journalist and editor, and has worked for Bio21’s MMIM group and The Medical Journal of Australia.