Anne-Louise’s writing career began in her teens with a coveted newspaper cadetship. Monitoring the police radio in the wee hours, with an ear for a scoop and an eye on the clock, catalysed a lively thirty years of journalism – a world of whip-cracking deadlines, punchy word counts and by-line pride.

Newspaper ink soon gave way to the glossier, though no less demanding, pages of magazines in Australia’s media heyday. As both a contributing writer and editor, Anne-Louise’s work has been internationally syndicated. Reportage became feature editorial in well-known lifestyle, architecture and travel publications, alongside a long-running serial column.

And then, evolution to dust jackets and library-dwelling. With a predilection for expansive context and detailed story-telling, Anne-Louise followed her desire to investigate the craft of writing all the way to UWA’s admissions office. Emerging four years later with first class Honours in Creative Writing and a suite of short stories, she informed her equal-parts supportive and aghast family that she’d be promptly jumping back into academia, this time the PhD vortex.

The PhD produced a publishable manuscript, many memorable semesters as a lecturer and tutor, and enough late nights to warrant a bulb of garlic hanging on the study door. Anne-Louise continues to teach at UWA with a particular interest in memoir and biography.

Anne-Louise lives in Fremantle, Western Australia.

Nora Heysen: A Portrait

Anne-Louise’s most recent work is a biography of Australian painter Nora Heysen, and was released nationally on 5 March 2019. Nora Heysen: A Portrait is published by Fremantle Press and is distributed by Penguin Random House.

The book’s launch coincided with a major retrospective exhibition, Hans and Nora Heysen – Two Generations of Australian Art presented by the National Gallery of Victoria.