Author, speaker, consultant based in Canberra, Australia.

All practices and services are culturally responsive and inclusive.

Disability and diversity advocate.

Your voice matters

A middle aged woman with shoulder lenght blonde hair wearing a black polo neck top. She has red reading glasses and is smiling, standing in front of bookshelves in a library.

I am a communicator, speaker, coach, writer, editor and author. I am of Gamilaraay descent and engage with my community and culture in many ways including via learning and practising language, and in the creative writing field. I am an active member of the First Nations Australia Writing Network (FNAWN) and Us Mob Writers (ACT) as well as MARION Writers ACT. I am proud to be an inaugural recipent of the FNAWN Varuna Residency Fellowship (2024). I strive to always ensure that my practice and work is culturally responsive and safe.

I am a person with Disability and a disability and neurodiversity advocate. I am an active member of People with Disability Australia (PwDA) and was a PwDA Director in 2022-2023.

My writing engages with themes related to inclusion and diversity, and tackles questions related to story sovereignty - who has the ‘right’ to tell a story, and what does this mean?

I believe that storytelling is connecting, and connecting is healing.

Services

Good writing — whether fiction or non fiction, poetry or prose — is clear, consise, consistent — and compelling.

The reality is that good writing is good writing — no matter the genre. Persuasive writing aims to tell a story, and in doing so, encourages the reader to see things in a new or different way.

  • I am available to speak at conferences, webinars, seminars, workshops and workplace events. Areas of expertise include:

    • Disability and neurodiversity in the workplace - how to foster psychologically safe and inclusive workplaces

    • Advancing Women with Disability in the workplace

    • Disability, Diversity and Inclusion

    • One Welfare perspectives in Science and Literature

  • Workshops can be presented face-to-face, online or hybrid. Topics include scientific and academic writing; project management and completion and the very popular ‘thesis midwifery’ (see below for more information on this service). Contact me to see how I can help you and to access testimonials.

  • Guidance and support to individuals and groups in their personal development and goal attainment. International Coaching Federation member.

  • Workshop resource development including (but not limited to) presentation materials, handbooks, study guides, participant pre and post surveys and assessment materials.

  • Peer review services are offered for medical, veterinary and educational articles in the broad disciplines of biological and medical sciences, including nutrition, reproduction, animal sciences, medical sciences, ethics, disability, family violence and mental health. Peer review services are negotiated based on individual requirements. This usually involves using scoring criteria/categories and preparing a report based on predetermined assessment criteria.

  • Peer review services are offered for Literary works. Peer review services are negotiated based on individual requirements. This usually involves using scoring criteria/categories and preparing a report based on predetermined assessment criteria.

  • Sensitivity reading involves a person with relevant experience, including lived experience, reading a manuscript prior to publication, to make editorial suggestions regarding content that could be considered offensive, inaccurate or stereotypical. It will generally be recommended that specialist/sensitive work will be referred to subject matter/cultural experts.

  • I am the ‘thesis midwife’ and have decades of experience in assisting the safe and successful delivery of your precious thesis. All topic areas, masters, PhD, honours … contact me to find out how I can help. I specialise in assisting difficult births, and ones that have been ‘stuck’ for some time. Many testimonials available.

  • 72nd Annual International Conference of the Wildlife Disease Association “Respect, Listen, Reflect” 1—6 December 2024, Canberra ACT Australia

    Plenary: What Could go Wrong? Bringing the Authentic Self to Work: Neurodiversity and Disability

    Anthropomorphism in western literature, One Welfare and First Nations storytelling

  • My short stories and poems have been published in anthologies and periodicals including The Common Thread Anthology (2007—2012) [Pippa Kay Pty Ltd] and The Highland Magazine (2006). My work has recently featured in Rabbit. a journal for nonfiction poetry Extinction vol 40 2024.

    • Persuasive academic and scientific writing workshops for Emerging Writers, School of Life and Environmental Services, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006

    • Advancing Women in Leadership Program, People with Disability Australia

    • Peer Assessor Creative Australia (Literature; Disability and First Nations panels)

    • Honorary Associate, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006

    • Awarded a 2025 Writers Space Residential Fellowship at Varuna the Writers House

    • Awarded Magabala Discretionary Professional Development Funding 2025

    • Longlisted for the Richell Prize November 2024

    • Highly Commended in the 2024 Varuna First Nations Fellowhip Program

    • Shortlisted for the Cambridge Australia First Nations Writer-in-Residence Fellowship Progam 2024

    • Inaugural recipient of the FNAWN Varuna Residency Fellowship 2024

    • Australian College of Educators Teaching Award (2004)

    • The University of Sydney Vice Chancellor’s Prize for Outstanding Teaching (2002)

    • Marion Writers (ACT)

    • Us Mob Writers (ACT)

    • First Nations Australia Writers Network (FNAWN)

    • People with Disability Australia (Board Member 2022/2023)

    • Institute of Professional Editors

    • Canberra Society of Editors

    • Australian Society of Authors

    • Diploma of Life Coaching (1084NAT) Life Coaching Academy (currently completing)

    • Certificates I,II and III in Aboriginal Languages (Gamilaraay) (2023) TAFE NSW

    • Certificate IV in Small Business Management SETS - NSW (2014)

    • Certificate IV in Training and Assessment TAFE NSW (2010)

    • Diploma of Editing and Publishing Macleay College - NSW (2008)

    •  Graduate Certificate in Higher Education (Hons) The University of Sydney NSW (2000)

    • PhD/Faculty of Veterinary Science The University of Sydney NSW (1995)

    • Bachelor of Science in Agriculture (Hons) The University of Sydney NSW (1988)

Creative works in progress

I was awarded an inaugural FNAWN Varuna Residency Fellowship in February 2024 for my poetry and in November my novel GRACE was longlisted for the 2024 Richell Prize. In January I was awarded a 2025 Varuna Writer’s Space Residential Fellowhip and Magabala Discretionary Professional Development Funding.

  • A child dies while in the care of other children — who is to blame and how does that blame spill over the generations to come?

    GRACE is a novel that poses unanswerable questions — how do we move through grief and guilt, and how do we escape the past? In doing so it also engages with the themes of story sovereignty and the power of voice.

  • Human male fertility is rapidly declining due to environmental contaminants. Climate change hastens the ever-present danger of a worldwide zoonotic pandemic. Widening socioecomic disparity and the effects of resource fuelled wars threaten political stabilty.

    Who takes responsibility — and who takes power?

    UMWELT is a connection of short stories that detail the end of the world as we know it — via the end of relationships, the end of lives, and the end of the Anthropocene.

  • Two Truths Can be Told is a collection of poems that detail some of the intergenerational legacies — those both deliberate and also unintended — of family violence and dysfunction.

Biography

My undergraduate qualifications are in Agricultural, Veterinary and Medical sciences. My postgraduate qualifications extend into Teaching and Learning, Editing and Publishing, Life Coaching and Small Business Management. I am about to embark upon my second PhD — this one in Creative Writing and Literature.

I am an experienced and well published scientific and academic writer and editor. My creative writing has been published in anthologies and journals and won awards.

I’m based in Canberra, Australia, but able to travel, and also deliver online.

Copyright

All works on this site are my original work and not to be reproduced in part or whole without written permission.