Ever since I was little, I have loved writing. When I was at primary school I thought the more words I wrote, the better my writing must be, so I used to write as big as I could and use lots of pages! As I got a bit older I realised that sometimes it’s better not to write quite so much and tell my story more clearly.
As a child and teenager, I ate books for breakfast, lunch and dinner and discovered poetry, even the stuff that didn’t rhyme, much of which is beautiful.
When I was in Year 10 I won second prize in the South Australian Young Writers award recounting a memory from when I was little and it was a huge buzz to see my story in a book. From that moment on I knew that I wanted to write, hopefully so people other than my family and friends could read it.
When I left school I went to university to study commerce, but to be perfectly honest, I found it a bit boring, other than learning Mandarin Chinese. So after I finished I decided to go and live in Beijing for half a year which was a huge shock to someone from a fairly small city, but loads of fun. I wrote journals, poetry and a newspaper article for the Beijing Daily whilst I was there. I got really good at haggling prices of food and clothing down in markets and riding my bike through thousands of others. It was a funny experience being the only blond person among everyone!
After Beijing I headed to London to work and travel around Europe and parts of the Middle East. I continued to write for travel magazines and in my journals – I love being able to read them years later and remember things I have forgotten.
When I returned to Australia I decided to live in Melbourne instead of Adelaide and also decided I was sick of working in an investment bank (booooooring!) and went back to university to study teaching.
I kept writing for fun and had a few things in The Age newspaper and wrote poems for my classes.
Fast forward another 10 or so years and I am now living in a beautiful seaside town in country Victoria. I am still teaching, although have moved into the art room which is way more fun and way messier than being a regular classroom teacher.
I love to learn new things and have heaps of hobbies, such as paddleboarding, crochet (a post apocalyptic survival skill!) and bee keeping – currently I have 4 hives and am besotted with ‘my girls’, it’s the best hobby – seriously!
I write regularly for adults, usually an opinion piece in a newspaper, which is where I feel strongly about something and want to tell other people about these feelings. And I still write fictional stories and poetry – mainly as presents for people I care about. Writing regularly is really important – it’s like exercising, the more you do it, the better you get. I also still read a lot and I think this is very important to grow as a writer, the more you know about, the more interesting your writing can become.
I love to hear from writers and readers of all ages, you can contact me via email
(make sure you have an adult’s permission to write to me, first!)