I am an author, freelance writer and editor, currently based in Yugambeh–Bundjalung country, on the border of Queensland and New South Wales.
My memoir What Will Be Worn: A McWhirters story was published by Transit Lounge in September 2018. What Will Be Worn is about five generations of women in my mother’s family, centred around the Brisbane department store McWhirters, which was started by my great-great grandfather in 1898. Told via a contemporary frame, the stories are woven together using motifs of fashion, clothing and identity, focusing on the patterns that repeat across generations.
Buy What Will Be Worn
My award-winning fiction and nonfiction has been published in Overland, Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin, QWeekend and others. I am writing my current book, working title Intertidal, via a practice-led creative writing PhD within the Aberdeen-Curtin Alliance program. In a series of creative nonfiction essays, I am exploring the ways in which people and places are connected, and disconnected, by our shared use of the world’s oceans and seas. My research involves a metaphorical and literal immersion in intertidal zones through surfing and wild swimming. Read more about it here.
I teach and lecture in creative writing courses at a number of universities, and lead workshops in memoir and creative nonfiction for teenagers and adults. I’ve been a professional writer and editor since the turn of the century, specialising in content and copywriting for clients in the travel, medical and not-for-profit sectors. To find out more about the way that I work, and see samples of what I’ve done, check out my portfolio or get in touch.
At various times throughout my life (but mostly pre-21st century) I’ve worked as a receptionist, data entry clerk, call centre operator, market research telephonist, editorial assistant and nanny. I’ve taught swimming and horse-riding, and led tours through South East Asia. I’ve had a lot of shitty jobs, and some really great ones. I’ve travelled a lot, most recently to Scotland, France, Portugal and Germany. A few years ago I travelled overland along the Silk Road from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to Beijing, China.
For a month in the (northern) summer of 1996 I was a temp at the Potato Marketing Board in Oxford, UK. In 1997, while travelling in India, I had the extraordinary – and extraordinarily random – privilege of ‘working’ as an extra in the film Arunchalam, starring the legendary Tamil actor Rajnikanth.