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I’m delighted to be returning to the UK next month as the recipient of the 2019 Di Yerbury Residency Award, through the Society of Women Writers NSW.

From North Devon, I’ll undertake research for my second historical fiction Borrowed Milk. The story is inspired by the wife of a wealthy squire, Elizabeth Brand. Her insistence on breastfeeding her babies was considered so remarkable that when she died in 1636 it was recorded on her memorial brass that she left behind ‘6 sonnes and 6 daughters (all nursd with her unborrowed milk)’.

My own story is set in and around Exeter in the 1600s, and follows a married woman who is hired to wet-nurse the child of a prosperous merchant family. Borrowed Milk explores the delicate personal, physical and commercial relationships between the two families.

Many thanks to Di Yerbury and the Society of Women Writers NSW for this wonderful opportunity.

From left to right, previous recipients of the Di Yerbury Residency Award, Felicity Pulman and Valerie Pybus, with Helen Thurloe and Professor Emerita Dianne Yerbury AO

The new year brings with it a new residential fellowship, and I’m very much looking forward to a fortnight of focussed writing at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre in April 2019.

Here’s hoping that the writerly magic of KSP’s former home near Perth, plus the inspiration of being surrounded by wordsmiths, will be the spur to complete my historical fiction, The Fourteenth Wife. Well, fingers crossed (but not while typing, obviously)…

It was a wonderful event at the Society of Women Writers NSW Book Awards, even before Promising Azra was announced as the winner of the 2018 Young Adult category. I’m pictured here at the State Library of New South Wales receiving a crystal trophy from acclaimed children’s author Susanne Gervay. 

Inspired by Daniel Defoe’s A Tour in Circuits, Through the Island of Great Britain (1724-1727), my current novel-in-progress is set in the marshes of Essex, England. Research is pretty much complete, and here is some of the scenery. The third draft is well underway, and should be completed by the end of 2018. Stay tuned…

Image:Sarah Newman

Though there’s nothing Snugglepot or Cuddlepie about the sequel to Promising Azra, I’m thrilled to be going to Adelaide in 2018 as a May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust Fellow.