Paul Monk was born and grew up in Melbourne, and took out a BA with First Class Honours in European history at the University of Melbourne and a PhD in international relations at the Australian National University. He joined the Australian Department of Defence in 1989 and the Defence Intelligence Organisation in 1990, where he later became head of China analysis and chairman of the inter-agency working group on China. In 2000 he co-founded Austhink, a critical-thinking skills training and consulting firm in Melbourne. He is the author of Thunder from the Silent Zone: rethinking China (Scribe), which was short listed for the 2006 Age Book of the Year Awards and NSW Literary Awards and Sonnets to a Promiscuous Beauty: A Homage to the Western Canon (Barrallier, 2006). A volume of his essays is to be published in 2007 The West in a Nutshell: Literary and Philosophical Reflections at the Beginning of the 21st Century (Barrallier, forthcoming).