I am a Sydney-based writer, consultant and educator with roots in the Hunter Valley of NSW and strong links with South India.

My writing includes: tanka, tanka prose, poems and fiction published in journals and anthologies in Australia, Japan, UK, New Zealand, USA and Canada, including anthologies resulting from the Montreal Poetry Prize (2011) and the ACU Poetry Prize (2014, 2018 & 2019). My poem, “Last night on Mount Zion” was Highly Commended in the 2019 ACU Poetry Prize.

My early writing included creating and directing two nationally-awarded curriculum projects. There have been other curriculum-related books and academic papers on education, leadership and ministry. In 2008, I co-edited a monograph on education with Dan Riley, a very satisfying project bringing together the experience of many experienced and creative educators.

In 2016, Gemstones, an anthology of tanka written in collaboration with eight other international poets. was published by the UK-based Skylark Publications.  Her non-fiction, Saffron and Silk, An Australian in India, was published by Melbourne publisher, David Lovell Publishing, in September 2016 and by Notion Press in Chennai in 2018. Recent books are Australian Catholic Educators 1820-2020 (edited with Seamus O’Grady in 2020) and Leadership for a Synodal Church (co-authored with Charles Burford in 2021).

As well as being a writer, I describe myself as an academic, teacher and education consultant. I’ve authored or co-authored over 40 significant reviews in Australia and internationally. These were mostly senior performance reviews or organisational reviews. For 16 years, I held senior administrative roles within education in Western Sydney, including university governance, involvement in NSW Government education boards and committees, and for nine years was Executive Director of 75 schools in the Catholic Diocese of Parramatta in Western Sydney.  I am an Honorary Professor of Australian Catholic University, an Honorary Fellow University of Western Sydney, Fellow of the Australian College of Educators and Fellow of the Australian Council of Educational Leaders.

My current writing projects include the creation of a biographical dictionary, family history, church leadership and poetry.

In 2021, I became a grandmother for the first time, and that, along with my husband and my family of  three wonderful adult children, is what really counts.