Writing
I’ve worked with words all of my working life, but mostly in very prosaic and practical ways. I’m now drawing on my lifelong love of stories and novels to write my own short stories, creative non-fiction and now a PhD in Environmental Humanities, combining environmental history and creative writing.
CV
2024 ‘‘I Feel Like I’m Part of the Ocean’: the inter-connected world of the ocean swimmer,’ Westerley: Oceans Issue
2024 ‘Thriving in a World of Plant: the Possibilities of Ecobiography’ Environmental History Now
2024 ‘Ghost Plants: the Possibilities of Botanical Ecobiography,’ Life Writing
2021 ‘Greens Pool: In Praise of Wild Swimming’, Westerly: Great Southern Special Issue
2021 ‘Divergence’, Shortlisted in 2021 Newcastle Short Story Award, publication in anthology upcoming.
2020 ‘In Praise of Wild Swimming’ First Prize and ‘Courage’ Second Prize in Memoir Category, 2020 Eastwood Hills Literary Competition
2019 ‘Deviation’, Second prize in KSP Short Fiction Awards.
2019 ‘Balance Due’, published in Underground Zine, Issue 28
2018 ‘Just One Night,’ Shortlisted in 2018 Newcastle Short Story Award, publication in anthology.
2018 ‘On the Trail of a Ghost.’ Landscapes. http://ro.ecu.edu.au/landscapes/vol8/iss1/11
2017 ‘Just One Night,’ Shortlisted in 2017 Margot Manchester Memorial Short Story Award, Society of Women Writers, Tasmania
2017 ‘Greens Pool’, Highly Commended in 2017 Trudy Graham/Julie Lewis Literary Award for Prose
2017 ‘An Apprenticeship,’ Second place in the Memoir Category, 2017 Eastwood Hills Literary Competition
2016 ‘Baby Booms and Fallow Wombs: The False History of the Childfree’. Overland, 29 August 2016 https://overland.org.au/2016/08/baby-booms-and-fallow-wombs-the-false-history-of-child-free/
‘The Plausibility Gap in the Denial of Climate Science’. 5 July 2011, ABC Drum Online http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-01/hodgsonclimate/2778378
Latest Writing Posts
Two weeks at KSP Writers Centre
The two weeks I spent at KSP Writers' Centre would have to be the most intensely productive of my short writing life. From the moment I stepped into Aldridge cabin on the Monday afternoon, unpacked all my books and opened my laptop, I was entirely focused on turning...
Israelite Bay
Getting to Israelite Bay is not easy. It is a major setting for my novel and I have only managed to step foot on the sandy salty ground twice. The first time was in 2006, when Tim and I were at the very beginning of our trip around Australia. Marcus, a...
An Apprenticeship
This piece about my uncle Sean won second prize in the Memoir section at the Eastwood/Hills Literary Competition for 2017. ~ This can’t have been the first time I met Mr Sean O’Rourke, but it is the first I remember clearly. I was 9 years old and my aunty Steph...