About Helen Hagemann

I grew up on the Central Coast of  New South Wales, Australia in a little town called Ettalong Beach. I liked writing compositions as a primary student but as time went by studying at high school and getting s job took over. In the late sixties, like most girls I got married and had children, and the creative writing was left behind. I had a limited education, esp. coming from a small coastal town; although teachers had encouraged me to finish year's five and six. But my parents couldn't afford to keep me at school - it was a time when an expense like that was thought to be wasted if marriage and children were the ultimate goals (or the only goal for a country girl!). And yes when married, I did enjoy my two children for many years, watching them grow, developing life skills through weekend activities as well as their many achievements at school. I put up with a dominant husband for many years thinking that things would get better. They didn't. So, feeling unfulfilled, and suppressed in a marriage that was a kind of silencing, I went back and finished my high school certificate at the age of 46 at Tuart College, Western Australia. In my mid-fifties I achieved a Masters in Writing at Edith Cowan University. You could call this personal growth, but I had a brain laying dormant through inactivity. It was only when I discovered tertiary education, undergraduate/ postgraduate academia that I realised I could do more with my life. The brain's muscle needed exercising. I still exercise it by teaching creative writing, reading broadly and writing poetry & fiction.