 In 2008, "Girl Stuff" won the Australian Publishers Association's General Non-fiction Book of the Year, the Australian Booksellers Association Nielsen BookData Booksellers' Choice Award, and an honour prize from the Children’s Book Council of Australia.Kaz Cooke was born and raised in Melbourne.As a teenager she worked in a second-hand bookstore, where she discovered the satirical Nigel Molesworth novels of Geoffrey Willans, illustrated by cartoonist Ronald Searle, and Searle's St Trinian's School cartoons.