The Corona Virus, or COVID 19 as we are being told to call it, is everywhere. And when I say everywhere I mean reports of it are on every news channel and social media site. It is now officially a pandemic. Contagious by nature, the fear of it is contagious
This is a picture of my paternal grandmother. She married my grandfather on 20 November 1912. She was 31, my grandfather was 36. By early twentieth century standards, and for a first marriage, they were older than the norm. My grandparents had at least five children between 1913 and 1919.
Until today it didn’t dawn on me that I am writing a memoir which could be termed historical. In my mind, my manuscript could be memoir or biography or autobiography or even creative non-fiction, but more than that, I haven’t thought about. My manuscript begins with the death of my
This morning I attended one of the Melbourne Writers Festival “Therapy Couch” sessions where author Cate Kennedy was in conversation with Krissy Kneen. Krissy, an award-winning writer whose books I have never read, is in the process of writing a memoir and Cate, whose books I have also never read,
When you are presented with the residue of death, the material remnants of someone who was close to you either by blood or affection; the sorting through and cleaning up process isn’t as glamorous as it is often made out to be. Sure, it is always possible to find long
After his death, the task of sorting through my father’s possessions was both daunting and confronting. He was quite the hoarder and filled every cupboard, every shelf and every drawer with “things”. Whether it was from need, necessity or compulsion he kept almost everything which made its way into the