Funder went to primary school in Melbourne and Paris; she attended Star of the Sea College and graduated as Dux in 1983.^[1] She studied at the University of Melbourne and the Freie Universität of Berlin, and holds a BA (Hons) and an LLB (Hons). She also has an MA from the University of Melbourne and a Doctor of Creative Arts degree from the University of Technology Sydney. Funder worked for the Australian Government as an international lawyer in human rights, constitutional law and treaty negotiation, before turning to writing full-time in the late 1990s.^[2]

Anna Funder's writing has received numerous accolades and awards. Her essays, feature articles and columns have appeared in numerous publications, such as The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, Best Australian Essays and The Monthly.^[3] She has toured as a public speaker, and is a former German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Australia Council for the Arts, NSW Writing and Rockefeller Foundation fellow.

In 2011 she was appointed to the Literature Board of the Australia Council.^[4]

Funder speaks French and German fluently.^[5] She lived with her husband and three children in Brooklyn, New York, returning to Australia after three and a half years.^[6][7]

Funder's Stasiland tells stories of people who resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of people who worked for its secret police, the Stasi. Stasiland has been translated into 16 languages.^[8]

Stasiland won the 2004 Samuel Johnson Prize and was also the finalist for the Age Book of the Year Awards, Guardian First Book Award, Queensland Premier's Literary Award, Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (Innovation in Writing), Index Freedom of Expression Awards and the W.H. Heinemann Award.^{[citation needed]}

Funder's 2012 novel All That I Am tells the previously untold story of four German-Jewish anti-Hitler activists forced to flee to London. There, they continued the dangerous and illegal work of smuggling documents out of Goering's office, and giving them to Winston Churchill (a backbencher at the time) to try to alert the world to Hitler's plans for war. In 1935 two of them were found dead from poison in mysterious circumstances in a locked room in Bloomsbury. The book was called "superb" by The Spectator, "strong and impressively humane" by the Times Literary Supplement), "a beautiful ensemble novel of Graham Green’esque proportions" by Weekendavisen and "an essential novel" by Colum McCann.^{[9][failed verification]}

The novel was BBC Book of the Week and Book at Bedtime in the UK, and The Times (London) Book of the Month for May 2012.^{[citation needed]}

All That I Am won the following awards:

• Miles Franklin Award 2012^[10]
• Western Australian Premier's Book Awards – 2011 Fiction Award and People's Choice Award
• Barbara Jefferis Award^[11]
• The Indie Book Awards Indie Book of the Year
• The Indie Book Awards Best Debut Fiction
• Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) Literary Fiction Book of the Year 2012
• Nielsen BookData Bookseller's Choice Award.

It was a finalist for the^{[citation needed]}

• IMPAC Award,
• Commonwealth Book Prize,
• Prime Minister's Literary Award,
• ALS Gold Medal,
• Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature – Fiction Prize,
• Victorian Premier's Literary Award,
• Australian Society of Authors Asher Literary Award.

Funder is an ambassador for the Norwegian-based International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN).^[12] ICORN is a global network of cities offering safe havens for persecuted writers. She is a member of the Advisory Panel of the Australian Privacy Foundation.^[13]

Funder is a member of the Folio Prize Academy and PEN International, both its Australian and US chapters. In 2007 she was chosen to deliver a PEN 3 Writers Lecture.^[14]

Funder's essays, articles and columns have appeared in many publications, including The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Ny Tid, and have been selected for Best Australian Essays. Her feature "Secret History", which appeared in The Guardian and in Good Weekend, about the files from the Nazi death camps held in obscurity by German authorities, won the 2007 ASA Maunder Award for Journalism.^[15]

Funder has delivered numerous named lectures, including the:

• Allen Missen Address for Liberty Victoria^[16]
• PEN Three Writers Lecture^[17]
• The closing address for the Perth Writers Festival 2013
• Dymphna Clark Memorial Lecture 2013^[18]
• ICORN Oration 2013.

Full list of awards:^{[citation needed]}

• German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellowship
• Samuel Johnson Prize, 2004
• ASA Maunder Prize, 2007
• Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, 2008
• Australia Council fellowship
• NSW Writing fellow, 2010
• In 2011 she was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald's '100 People of Influence' in Australia^[19]
• Western Australian Premier's Book Awards, 2011
• Western Australian Premier's People's Choice Award, 2011
• BBC Book of the Week and Book at Bedtime in the UK, 2011
• Miles Franklin Award, 2012^[10][7]
• Australian Book Industry Award (ABIA) Book of the Year, 2012
• ABIA Literary Fiction Book of the Year, 2012
• Nielsen BookData Bookseller's Choice Award, 2012
• Barbara Jefferis Award, 2012
• Indie Book of the Year, 2012
• Indie Best Debut Fiction, 2012
• The Times (London) Book of the Month for May 2012
• In 2012 she was appointed to the Literature Board of the Australia Council
• Funder was the winner of InStyle magazine's Woman of Style Award for Arts & Culture 2013^[20]

Full list of nominations:^{[citation needed]}

• The Age Book of the Year Awards
• The Guardian First Book Award
• Queensland Premier's Literary Award
• Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature (Innovation in Writing)
• Index Freedom of Expression Awards
• W. H. Heinemann Award
• IMPAC Award
• Commonwealth Book Prize
• The Prime Minister's Literary Award
• ALS Gold Medal
• Adelaide Festival Fiction Prize
• Victorian Premiers Literary Award
• The Australian Society of Authors Asher Literary Award
• Nonfiction Indie Book Award, 2024^[21]
• Women's Prize for Non-Fiction 2024 for Wifedom^[22]

• Funder, Anna (2003). Stasiland: Stories from behind the Berlin Wall. London: Granta. ISBN 978-1-86207-655-6. OCLC 55891480.
• All That I Am. London: Penguin. 2011. ISBN 978-1-926428-33-8.
• The Girl with the Dogs. Australia: Penguin. 2015. ISBN 978-0-14357-350-0.
• Wifedom – Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life. Hamish Hamilton. 2023. ISBN 9780143787112; about Eileen Blair, George Orwell's first wife.

• Official website
• Video: Anna Funder lecture on 'Courage' Sydney PEN 3 Voices Project, November 2008, on SlowTV
• Podcast of Anna Funder discussing "On East Germany" at the Shanghai International Literary Festival
• "Stasiland by Anna Funder", Guardian Unlimited, Thursday 6 November 2003.
• "Debut author wins Johnson prize", BBC News, Tuesday, 15 June 2004
• ABC Critical Mass biography: Anna Funder ABC Critical Mass, 2003
• Life Behind the Wall Now and Then Lancette Journal, review by Alidë Kohlhaas April 2004
• Byrnes, Sholto; Tonkin, Boyd (18 June 2004). "Anna Funder: Inside the real Room 101". The Independent. London. Retrieved 2 February 2008.