Kate Llewellyn is the author of 25 books comprising poetry, memoir, travel, essays, journals, and letters. She is the co-editor of The Penguin Book of Australian Women Poets. Her book The Waterlily: A Blue Mountain Journal sold over 35,000 copies and is soon to be republished. Kate was the first National Secretary of the Poets Union of Australia and now lives in Hove, South Australia.
Dr Ruth Bacchus ran a restaurant in a NSW country village before becoming a student and university medallist at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst. Her PhD explored ways for Western feminism to view satis (Hindu women who burn on the funeral pyres of their husbands). She now teaches literature, creative writing and politics at CSU. Her research interests are in the area of learning and teaching. She is an enthusiastic, though somewhat unmethodical, gardener.
Dr Barbara Hill is a Senior Lecturer at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst where she has dedicated her career to social justice and reconciliation through learning and teaching. Since 1993 she has taught subjects in English literature, Australian literature, existential literature, creative writing, sociology and professional writing. Her other areas of interest include Australian female authors; particularly the work of Dorothy Hewitt, Thea Astley, Marion Halligan and Kate Llewellyn. She also writes fiction and poetry.
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'The word that most often came to mind as I was reading these letters was 'exuberant'. Even when Kate is in despair, she describes her despair with gusto - as in her accounts of the deplorable behaviour of the men in her life, or her descriptions of a dreadful experience she once had as a writer in residence, left alone by the organisers to spend days and days being hungry, lonely, uncomfortable, bewildered and cold. What comes across in these accounts is the durability of two things that Kate has in abundance: her fearlessness, and her willingness to make herself vulnerable.' - Kerryn Goldsworthy
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'The familiar life and rush and passion that you know from Llewellyn's poems, her journals, her essays … Passages that are breathtakingly revealing.' - Ashley Hay, The Australian
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'By turns vociferous, weary, playful, humorous and generous, the selected letters … unfold like an epistolary memoir, packed with plush detail and the striking insight of a master wordsmith at the peak of her powers.' - Stephen Davenport, InDaily
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'Highly recommended … These letters have the reader peeking into Kate's life to see her as funny, vulnerable, weary and energetic.' - Linda Guthrie, ReadPlus
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'Llewellyn's voice is so compelling, her persona so open, and her writing so frequently funny, that I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent in her head.' - Sue Terry, Whispering Gums
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'These letters brim with the personality of the poet and prose master; they reflect her power to transfer images from her mind to the mind of the reader with skill and ease .. A must read for fans of Llewellyn.' - David O'Sullivan, Rochford Street Review