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a Portfolio and Blog

A Floating World

how we live is what makes us real. Cropped. Photograph by Annie Spratt

This blog is about some of the things I love: writing, reading, creating – coloured by my passions for human rights, inclusivity, elevating social hope, and amplifying diverse voices and stories.

This blog represents a collection of my writing including:

  • – musings and reflections (some will be creative pieces, some will be researched non-fiction)
  • – excerpts from published works
  • – fiction
  • – non-fiction
  • – reviews
  • – insights to my art
  • – a look at my current reading delights.

The blog is equipped with comments so that you can be a part of a conversation, if you choose.

Eye of a rook

Book Review: Eye of a Rook

Josephine Taylor I loved this book. I was engrossed and became increasingly anxious to discover the conclusion. Eye of a Rook provides a window into the twin chronicles of two women facing achingly similar challenges across a span of time that should have brought more change but had not. This debut novel…

Book Review: Empress Dowager Cixi

Jung Chang Ostensibly a biography researched and written by Jung Chang, it illuminates more than the life of “the Concubine Who Launched Modern China” but also how  perceptions of her beyond China were influenced by orientalism. Edward Said (1978) conceived of the practice of orientalism as a way in which…

Book review: Growing Up Disabled in Australia

edited by Carly Findlay So excited to hear that this valuable book is speaking to people and it’s already hit its second print run within two weeks of release! In so-called Australia, and arguably in many countries beyond, there are particular dominant societal narratives framing disability. Even seven years after…

Wearing Labels

If born on your terms     A witch   Many letters of the rainbow   too many of you hate            or mock            as if respecting humanity            is so burdensome          …

Rewriting rights

Seeing through a fog of privilege Lately, perhaps as pandemic anxiety eases in some places, rhetoric rights have been compromised or denied seems to be on the rise again. With the urgency of mortal risk being either normalised or minimised, the agitation about other concerns is given space. Most often,…

When they left

I didn’t say Goodbye I couldn’t sleep deeply last night and managed a couple of brief naps at most. My body was simply ‘alert’ all through the night. I recognised it was my body knowing something my conscious mind did not. Confident I would figure it out in the morning,…

A podcast that delves into the journeys of women from around so-called Australia and their reflections on their core values, vulnerability, holding their own definition of success, and what it means to be a woman, cracks and all: because never hurting, falling, or grieving isn’t what makes Wonder Women. Read more.

Publications

Major Works In Progress

Yin Yang fern. Image by Mario Dobelmann.

I am currently researching and developing two major projects

  • A collection of women’s stories, exploring their defining moments, challenging the definition of success, and celebrating the ways in which they have and continue to leave a mark on those around them. Women (including trans and femmes), GNC, NB, iand intersex people continue to hold up half the sky but their stories do not fill half our shelves or half the pages we read. Excerpts from interviews and conversations will be featured in the podcast.
  • A consideration of the multiplicity of lives with experiences of family, domestic, and gendered violence. The impacts reach beyond boundaries and into our futures, perhaps seeded in the legacy of living in Australia, made with violence upon many lands of First Peoples. 

I am developing a collection of short stories inspired by fairy-tale and mythology to explore dark themes and the edges of our potential for different ways forward. 

My poetry plays with form, imagery, and lyricism to explore and challenge definitions, identity, and existence. 

My visual art practice incorporates the underlying philosophy of wabisabi and melding of traditional and contemporary methods, recognising that we all straddle multiple ways and worlds, not just those of us consigned to the obvious membership of cultural diaspora. I challenge the idea that cracks, fragility, visibility of broken history are synonymous with lesser beauty or value. Much like trauma, mistakes and difficult experiences, these form our valuable and idiosyncratic stories and inform our present and future potential.