BIOGRAPHY
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I was born in March 1949 in Invercargill, New Zealand, the first of four children. My parents valued reading, as did various members of my large extended family, so I was surrounded by books from an early age. As a child I enjoyed telling stories about actual events, invariably embellishing them. I also wrote fragments of fiction in notebooks, blissfully unaware that I was embarking on a writer’s life.
My teenage years also involved books. I belonged to three libraries and regularly borrowed an eclectic mix, ranging from the classics through to obscure non-fiction texts. Later, as a young mother, I read at night to my three children, a ritual we enjoyed immensely. I also read each evening and felt uneasy if there were fewer than three new books on my bedside table.
In my late twenties I enrolled in a undergraduate degree at the University of Otago, NZ, which, in my first year, included two English papers. My reading list expanded and my ability to critique literary works was enhanced. After completing this degree, as well as a tertiary teaching qualification, I embarked on a Master of Arts degree, also at the University of Otago. In my thesis, ‘Telling Our Professional Stories’, I explored the role of reflective storytelling and journalling in professional development contexts, a topic which closely related to my full-time role as a staff development coordinator at Otago Polytechnic, NZ. Writing this thesis enabled me to enhance my writing skills and to develop the confidence to take the next step towards becoming a fiction writer.
At the age of 46 I attended an Otago University Summer School in Creative Writing. Later the same year, a story I had written during the course was accepted for publication in a literary magazine and was also broadcast on National Radio. Of course rejection slips followed, but so did small successes. I won national and international short story competitions and had work accepted for Penguin, Random House and Reed anthologies. Now that I could add ‘writer’ to ‘lecturer’ and ‘researcher’, my focus shifted to writing books.
I co-authored, Learning through Storytelling in Higher Education, which was published in 2002 by Dunmore Press, NZ, and in 2003 by Kogan Page, UK, and later the same year by RoutledgeFalmer, UK and USA. But it wasn’t until 2005 that my first fiction book, Live News and Other Stories, was published by Steele Roberts, NZ. The following year Penguin Group (NZ) offered me a two-book contract for my first novel, Ribbons of Grace, and a second novel, In Quiet Exile.
My writing life continues to evolve and flourish. I belong to the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) and was Vice-president of the NZSA National Council from May 2003 to May 2006. I represented the society’s local branch on the Otago University Burns Literary Fellowship Selection Panel during the same period. In 2006 I participated as a writer at the inaugural Leeds Metropolitan University Literary Festival, Leeds, UK. I continue to coordinate and teach on three writing courses offered by Otago Polytechnic, NZ, advance my narrative-based research, and deliver workshops and lectures at various universities in the United Kingdom. A day without writing, reading or storytelling feels to me as though it has not been well lived.