ABOUT MARJOBOOKS AUTHORS

MAUREEN (Michelle) SMITH

Born in Wagga Wagga NSW in 1943, Maureen spent her school years in Swansea Public School and Belmont High School. She did her general nurses training at Kurri Kurri District Hospital and midwifery at Royal Newcastle Hospital. She's enjoyed a 30 year career in the many fields of nursing, her favourites being audiometry and health education. She has a Diploma in Teaching (Nursing) and a Bachelor of Education.

On a personal note at age 23 she married and had 2 children, Andrew and Natalie. After her divorce she moved to Katherine, Northern Territory, when she met and eventually married Allan Smith. Together they operated Allan's Tourist Park and mango plantation on the Daly River. In 2001 they moved to the Central Coast of NSW where they now live and enjoy the close proximity to children and grandchildren.

Writing was always Maureens preferred outlet for expressing feelings. Now she writes for the sheer joy of it and to share her thoughts and ideas with others.

She has had short stories published in Northern Territory Anthologies, has completed a novel (yet to be published) and is currently working on a new novel. She is thrilled to be a co author with her long time friend Joan McCarthy and looks forward to completing their next book.

 

JOAN (Morgan) McCARTHY

When she was at school she was called "fatso" and spat on for being ugly and stupid.

Now that she’s grown:

• 51 year old Maree calls her, ‘her funky Mum’
• 26 year old Bianca calls her, ‘her groovy Gran’
• 8 year old Regan calls her ‘Great Granmother’
• 63 year old Margaret calls her, ‘her stubborn sister’
• 65 year olds Maureen and Bev call her their ‘confidante’
• 91 year old Marie calls her, ‘her wackiest daughter’
• The professor calls her his ‘most interesting student’

Who is she? What has made her who she is today?

She grew up in Guildford in the western suburbs of Sydney and married a local boy. She then settled down to what she thought would be a lifetime of rearing her family. What followed is a different story. She had eight pregnancies in ten years resulting in four children, one dying after birth and three miscarriages. By then she figured that according to her original picture, she should be old and yet at 28 she still felt vibrant and young – woops! Something was askew. She questioned the Catholic Church by researching the Papal Encyclicals on childbirth and discovered that the Church had moved, albeit in ‘dolly steps’, relentlessly towards a liberal position during the previous fifty years yet was still a long way from condoning the pill. She decided that she could not wait for the next fifty years and grasping her fate firmly in her own hands, she took it anyway.

She ran a retreat Centre in Newcastle for three years called the Sophia Centre. She still regularly runs retreats for women and sometimes men in the Hunter Valley. She has travelled to Maui in Hawaii to study Sacred Sexuality and has completed three of four modules so far. She is currently continuing her work on sexuality, adult maturation and “The Mask of Masculinity” with her post graduate co-learning group at Newcastle University.

To describe her, people use words such as: honest, straight forward, you know where you stand with her, ebullient, feisty, vibrant, intelligent, fun loving, catalyst, caring, compassionate, creative (she loves textile crafty things especially) spiritual and of course sexy.