About

• 

In so many ways, I’m living the dream I wrote in my diary as a 17 year old: “I want to be a writer, a mother and a teacher”. And so I am. I didn’t know then that “gardener” would be added to my list of what makes a meaningful life for me. Nor how necessary it would be to maintain the rage of fierce feminism. And of course, none of us dream of experiencing the inevitable tragedies and strains of life: loss, conflict, heartbreak or the slow soul-death of mortgages and compromise.

I once heard someone say that they fully embraced life once they realised that life is the obstacles we face. My writing is full of these too. When I first studied Creative Writing as a 19 year old, I had almost permanent writer’s block – in fact, one of the few decent pieces I wrote was about that. Then I began to live.

I have lived in England and East Africa and all over Australia. I have worked in a vegetable-packing factory, been ‘let go’ from two waitressing jobs for being rubbish, worked in market research (yes, that awful person who called you at tea time to ask who you planned to vote for and, by the way, which toilet paper brand do you prefer?) and juggled multiple jobs with study.

I have travelled alone, co-founded a not-for-profit organisation that built accommodation and services for vulnerable women and their children in Tanzania. I have trained and worked as a doula and childbirth educator. I have volunteered in refugee programs, kids’ sports teams, community birth groups and school P&C associations.

I have been a primary school teacher (and EALD and Learning Support specialist) for over twenty years now. I hold a Master of Teaching (Primary, Hons 1) degree, GradCert in Editing and Publishing and I have almost completed the Master of Creative Writing at Macquarie University.

I have met and married my soul mate (who is as challenging as he is brilliant) and birthed and am raising the three loves of my life: Sammy, Paddy and Aisling.

I have met so many other people: inspiring, disturbing, curious, quirky, who fill my writer’s head with wonder and puzzlement.

My life is the story that births ideas for the other stories I write. I speak for me, for I have no other voice. But I hope my stories speak to you, and touch on the universal truths that connect us all.