My love for literature and the arts has guided me throughout my career as an English teacher, library manager, and double award-winning Deaf author. I have more than twenty years’ experience of writing and editing, with a specialism in education and disability advocacy.
My first published books were nonfiction guides for professional educators, published by Continuum Publishers, now Bloomsbury Press. They have been translated into numerous languages and sold worldwide. I later began working as a technical editor, making updates and revisions for the “… for Dummies” range of books with John Wiley & Sons.
After taking a ten-year hiatus to raise and home-tutor my two children, I returned to writing in 2017, focusing on horror and speculative fiction. In 2019, I was shortlisted for a Sir Julius Vogel Award – recognising excellence in science fiction, fantasy, or horror works created by New Zealanders – for my debut collection, Dark Winds Over Wellington.
Since then I have published three award-nominated short-story collections, an award-nominated charity anthology, a military-horror creature-feature novella, two poetry chapbooks, and over fifty short stories, essays and poems. I’ve been very busy!
My awards
Winner:
- Australian Shadows Award (2020) Nonfiction—“An Exploration of Menstruation in Horror and Dark Fiction”
- Sir Julius Vogel Award (2022) Nonfiction — “What You Need Right Now is a Nice Soothing Horror Story”
Finalist:
- Emeka Walter Dinjos Memorial Award for Disability in Speculative Fiction – “Long Drop” in SEEDS
- Australian Shadows Award (2021) Collected Work—SEEDS (self-published & edited)
- Sir Julius Vogel Award (2021) Collected Work—SEEDS
- Ladies of Horror Fiction Awards (2021) Collected Work—SEEDS
- Australian Shadows Award (2020) Edited Works—BLACK DOGS, BLACK TALES (Things in the Well Press)
- Sir Julius Vogel Award (2019) Collected Work—Dark Winds Over Wellington (self-published and edited)
My Bibliography
You can read a full bibliography of all my published works here.