Holly Hill (author)

Holly Hill is the Australian bestselling author of Sugarbabe and Toyboy, memoirs originally published by Random House Australia in 2007 and 2008. Sugarbabe was later published in New York 2010 by Skyhorse Publishing generating a media storm, including guest appearances on CNN, Larry King, Dr Phil, 60 Minutes and Playboy Radio.

Hill was born in 1966 in Canberra, Australia. She went to public schools and started out as a cadet journalist with the Port Macquarie News. She later went to the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba and graduated in 1990 with an Arts degree in Human Behaviour.

Hill moved to Sydney and was the state coordinator of the Schizophrenia Fellowship of NSW before stepping sideways into public relations at the University of Sydney and Australian Financial Markets Association, before returning to Port Macquarie in 1998 as a Public Relations Manager for Country Energy.

Her father, Geoffrey William Hill, 64, was killed in his Gold Coast home in January 1999 by his estranged wife, Erlinda Rosal Hill, 52, of Surfers Paradise. She was found guilty of manslaughter on 29 May 2001 of what she claimed to be a planned double suicide. Hill shattered her right leg and ankle in a skydiving accident on 23 December 2000 and fought much of her father’s case from her hospital bed. She spent two years on crutches and gained employment in May 2003 with her rehabilitator, CRS Australia. She worked with a variety of clients suffering physical and mental injuries and transferred to Blacktown CRS in Sydney’s western suburbs in June 2005. She quit work in December of the same year at the behest of her wealthy lover, ‘John’ and the ensuing events are detailed in her memoirs, Sugarbabe and Toyboy.

Hill’s term, ‘negotiated infidelity’ sparked passionate debate on talkback radio and chatrooms, with thousands of comments by enraged monogamists and supporters alike. However, in April 2012 Holly retracted her notion of "negotiated infidelity", saying it emasculates men and makes women feel insecure.

Hill and her then partner, Charles Philip Dean, conducted a four-year ‘road test’ of the lifestyle as research for her third memoir, The Velvet Pouch (HarperCollins April 2013) and Hill now says any infidelity must be the "exception and not the rule" and she has reversed the notion, calling it negotiated FIDELITY instead.

She states: "Whilst we know that monogamy hasn't worked for at least fifty percent of couples and has been scientifically discredited in books such as ‘Sex at Dawn’, it must still remain as a collaborative option in our relationship repertoire. Negotiated fidelity is about defining a couple's unique sexual boundaries for their ongoing relationship and is part of the notion of having UNCONDITIONED LOVE. Unlike traditional concepts of human love, unconditioned love also recognizes our hardwired aspects, such as chemistry, pathology, gender differences, sexuality, inherited fetishes and hormones."