Lee Winter is an Australian novelist and former journalist who writes lesbian fiction. She is known for The Red Files (2015), Requiem for Immortals (2016), and the Villains series. Winter has won Golden Crown Literary Society awards and was one of the 2023 Alice B Readers Award winners.
Lee Winter was born in Christchurch, New Zealand. Early childhood was spent on the Gold Coast in Queensland before the family moved to Brisbane. The linked sources do not give details of formal education. Before fiction, Winter built a three-decade career in journalism and won awards for that work.
Winter began working with Ylva Publishing in 2014. Her first novel, The Red Files (2015), drew on her background in journalism and later became a Lambda Literary Award finalist. This was followed by Requiem for Immortals (2016), which also reached the Lambda shortlist. The Red Files won the Golden Crown Literary Society's 2016 award for Mystery/Thriller. Requiem for Immortals won the same prize in 2017.
Subsequent novels include Shattered (2017), The Brutal Truth (2017), Breaking Character (2018), Changing the Script (2019), Hotel Queens (2020), The Awkward Truth (2021) and Vengeance Planning for Amateurs (2024).
In 2023, Winter opened the Villains series with The Fixer (2023). Chaos Agent (2023) followed the same year. The Fixer set a preorder record for Ylva Publishing. In 2024, Chaos Agent won the GCLS award for Romantic Blend. It also won the Ann Bannon Popular Choice Gold prize. In 2025, Vengeance Planning for Amateurs won GCLS Romantic Blend. That book also took Ann Bannon Silver. Winter also works part-time as an editor. Winter once said, “Journalism is right to the point.”
Winter’s most recent book is When She Flies (2026). Ylva Publishing lists it as a romance novel and describes it as a lesbian office romance. The story follows Sienna Fisher, a free-spirited artist who is mistaken for an intern at a New York luxury goods firm. There Sienna meets CEO Jasmine Gemayel, an English art curator linked to an earlier turning point in Sienna’s life.
Years before, Jasmine had dismissed Sienna’s art in London and mocked her lack of life experience. The plot of the novel hinges on a second meeting, an in-house design contest, and Jasmine's desire to impress Sienna again. Ylva also categorises the novel as a slow-burn, enemies-to-lovers, second-chance romance.
Photo credit: www.leewinterauthor.com
