long bio

When I was 19, studying arts/law at Monash University, I returned from a trip to the US with jet lag. Awake in the early hours of the morning, I wrote a humorous piece about my trip. A friend suggested I send it to The Age, and so I did - typing it on an electric typewriter and mailing it into an editor. It became my first published piece.

I finished my degrees, which included a year studying screenwriting and playwriting at UCLA in Los Angeles, and by the end, I had a full-time writing career, working as a journalist. I’ve worked on staff at magazines, as a feature writer and editor, living in New York, Los Angeles, Sydney and Melbourne. I’ve had columns for Elle magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Herald Sun newspaper and have been published extensively in Australia, the US, UK and Southeast Asia, writing for publications including Harper’s Bazaar, marie claire, Rolling Stone, InStyle and Empire (UK) magazines, and the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Australian Financial Review newspapers

After a decade away, I returned to Melbourne in 2000, which eventually became one of the world’s most locked-down cities during the pandemic. In 2021, with journalistic work going dry, I sat down during lockdown number six to do what I always had wanted to do: write my mother’s story. I had been dealing with so much grief around my mother Mira’s death in 2017 and I not only wanted to honour her life and record its place in history, but I yearned to find words for my feelings and everything I was going through. I wrote the first draft of A Brilliant Life in six weeks.

I was 57 when my book, my first, was published. In 2024, I was shortlisted for the ABIA 2024 Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year for A Brilliant Life.

I live in Melbourne, where I am the mother of two teenagers.