Biographical Information
I was born and spent my
childhood in Britain, emigrating to Australia as an adolescent, and
becoming an Australian citizen as an adult. I have now lived here for
over 30 years, first in Perth, and then in Melbourne. Since 1979 I have
been teaching a wide range of subjects, and have taught writing at the
tertiary level, to both undergraduates and postgraduates, since 1989. In 1998 I was one of the founding
editors of the
first Australian all-poetry e-zine, Divan.
Since July 2000 I have been teaching at the University
of Melbourne in the Media
and
Communications Program, where I am Lecturer/Coordinator of one of the first-year core subjects, Professional
Writing, of the fourth/fifth level subject Media Writing: Rhetoric and Practice, and as well am Coordinator of Writing Subjects in the Media and Communications Program.
From Dec 2006 through to the end of June 2007 I lived in
France, researching and teaching in the department Etudes Interculturelles de Langues Appliquees, at Universite
Paris-Diderot,
a
partner institution of the University of Melbourne. I returned to
Paris in early December 2007 for two and a half months, in order to
escape the summer heat and work on my research in peace. I returned to
Australia on Sorry Day (February 13 2008), and for once felt very
positive about coming home!
My
latest book, Power Prose: Writing
Skills for the Media Age, was published by Hardie Grant Books,
in 2004
and is available in bookshops in Australia, or online from the
University of Melbourne bookshop, or
from Amazon. My first (co-edited) book, Who'd Be
A Mother? (Angus & Robertson, 1990), is available in most
Australian libraries, but hard to buy; I've had some success in the past in obtaining copies from Amazon.uk.
Currently I am
researching the relationship between online and print newspaper content
in the twelve main Australian newspapers. I am also working
on an
ethnographic book of women's experiences of living their middle years
in the media
age. In addition to this I am revising Power Prose to
give it 50% new content, and to have it published as a downloadable
e-book.
One of my favourite moments in life is when a student (current
or former) tells me of the publication of their first (or latest) piece of writing -
something that happens quite often!
. 