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Vivienne Cleven was born in l968, Queensland, and grew up in western Queensland, homeland of her Aboriginal heritage. She left school at the age of thirteen to work with her father as a jillaroo: building fences, mustering cattle, and working at various jobs on stations throughout Queensland and New South Wales.

In 2000, with the manuscript Bitin' Back, Vivienne Cleven entered and won the David Unaipon Award. Published the following year, Bitin' Back was shortlisted in the 2002 Courier-Mail Book of the Year Award and in the 2002 South Australian Premier's Award for Fiction. In the latter shortlist, Bitin' Back was listed with Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang, which won. She wrote the playscript for Bitin' Back, which will be performed by Brisbane's Kooemba Jdarra Indigenous Theatre Company. Her Sister's Eye was published in 2002 and was chosen in the 2003 People's Choice shortlist of One Book One Brisbane. Her writing is included in Fresh Cuttings, the first anthology of UQP Black Australian Writing, published in 2003

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