Women of a Certain Age
Page 14
Brigid Lowry has a master of arts in creative writing, and has published both poetry and short fiction for adults, as well as eight books for teenagers. Guitar Highway Rose and Juicy Writing: Inspiration and Techniques for Young Writers are two of her prize-winning YA titles. Her latest book is Still Life With Teapot: On Zen, Writing and Creativity (Fremantle Press, 2016). Brigid is a Zen student who believes in op shops, coloured pencils, vegetables, oceans, cake, floral frocks, postcards, and fostering joy and creativity in herself and others.
Pam Menzies is a passionate activist who organised her first protest at the age of seventy. As a younger person, she did everything to escape country life on the South Coast of NSW. Now older, she spends as much time as possible on a bushy block of land in the Southern Tablelands. An earlier version of this piece was published in Overland in 2016.
Jodie Moffat commenced her law degree the year she turned forty and graduated as a Juris Doctor at the age of forty-four. Her paper, ‘Arranging Deckchairs on the Titanic’, won the Morella Calder Memorial Prize in 2010, and was published in the Australian & New Zealand Maritime Law Journal that year. Jodie spent five years as a commercial litigator in the Perth CBD before taking up practice as a generalist solicitor with a community legal service in 2017. She ran as the Greens Party lower house candidate in her hometown of Mandurah in the 2017 state election.
Charlotte Roseby is a writer, editor and documentary film-maker. She works as a copywriter, getting in deep with a range of technical subjects. Charlotte’s first film Still Breathing, seen on SBS TV, documents her friend Rob’s moment of truth as he faces the decision to have a lung transplant. Her second film, In the End, featured on ABC TV’s Compass program. It explores the consequences of modern medical advances in intensive care that are prolonging elderly patients’ lives, when they are already well along the path of dying.
Maria Scoda is an experienced clinical and consult ant psychologist who works in private practice in the Sydney CBD. She earned her doctorate in clinical psychology from the Australian National University in 2002. She also holds a bachelor of arts, with honours in psychology. In addition to her clinical work, Maria assists business executives to understand and manage complex relationship dynamics for better interpersonal relationships in the workplace and at home. She is regularly contacted by the media for professional commentary and opinion on psychological issues, such as relationships, anxiety and depression.
Jenny Smithson is a Commissioner of the NSW Land and Environment Court and a qualified town planner, being a Life Fellow and former state president and national councillor of the Planning Institute of Australia. She is a former senior principal of international consulting firm Cardno. She is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a former director of BSD Consultants, Cardno (WA), and LandCorp. Jenny was appointed by the WA Government as a commissioner to the Shire of Albany and to the City of Cockburn Councils. In 1996 she was a finalist for the WA Citizen of the Year for her contribution to the planning profession.
Susan Laura Sullivan writes fiction, essays and poetry. Her work has been published in Westerly: New Creative, Plumwood Journal, and The Font: A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, among others. She holds a master of creative arts, and has taught creative writing at Curtin University and to the general community. She was shortlisted for the T.A.G. Hungerford Award in 2012, and currently lives in Japan, where she teaches English.
Pat Mamanyjun Torres is an Australian First Peoples woman. Her ancestors are traditional owners of Djugun, Yawuru, Garajarri, Nyul-Nyul, Jabirr-Jabirr and Bardi lands in the areas around Broome, WA. Pat is passionate about the development of the Australian wild/native foods industry and its holistic engagement with Indigenous people, and she is committed to the ‘good, clean and fair’ Slow Food ethos for native foods in her region. She is a published author and illustrator, whose work has appeared in Kimberley Stories (Fremantle Press, 2012).
Acknowledgements
Women of a Certain Age was made possible due to the honesty and generosity of certain women of a certain age. The editors would like to thank our contributors for so willingly and completely sharing their stories with us.
Thanks to Georgia Richter, Naama Grey-Smith and the team at Fremantle Press whose enthusiasm and editorial expertise guided us through all stages of the book.
Jodie would like to personally thank Jeff, Earl, Argus and Uther, Tracy, Jenny, Michelle and Deborah, Patricia and Ronald, and all her nieces, nephews, cousins and friends who have supported and sustained her through the years, and in this project.
Maria would like to say a warm thank you to Andy Nehl, Val Scoda, Rob Scoda and Diana Bartolillo for their helpful feedback and useful conversations, and to Georgia Richter for her excellent advice.
Sue is indebted to her mother, Margaret Sullivan, and great-aunt, Margaret (Mag) O’Rourke, whose life experiences influenced the telling of her own story. She is grateful to her friends and family for their encouragement and input, and to the many others who contributed to the making of the book.
The three of us appreciate the inspiration and support we drew from one another that saw us through the editorial process. We’d like to thank the wisdom that comes with age, late-night Skype calls, and recognising that nearly everything goes better with a glass of wine, or if truly dire, a comparable quantity of chocolate.
More great reads
available from fremantlepress.com.au
from Fremantle Press
as ebooks and at all good bookstores
More great reads
available from fremantlepress.com.au
from Fremantle Press
as ebooks and at all good bookstores
First published 2018 by
FREMANTLE PRESS
25 Quarry Street, Fremantle WA 6160
(PO Box 158, North Fremantle WA 6159)
www.fremantlepress.com.au
Copyright © individual contributors, 2018
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Cover image: Alamy.com, EB3ENG
Printed by McPherson’s, Australia
Women of a Certain Age: Life stories from Anne Aly, Liz Byrski, Sarah Drummond, Mehreen Faruqi, Goldie Goldbloom, Krissy Kneen, Jeanine Leane, Brigid Lowry, Pat Mamanyjun Torres and others
ISBN: 9781925591156 (epub)
Fremantle Press is supported by the State Government through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries.
Publication of this title was assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.