I’ve always lived in books.

From the day I was old enough to work, I started knocking on the doors of our local bookstores begging for a job. It took until I was nineteen to finally work at Dymocks. And then, in my final semester at university, someone said, “You know you can make a career out of books, right?” Until that moment, I had been repeatedly told that books were “just a hobby.”

I finished my degree, travelled around the world, and returned to Australia. It took nine long months to get my foot in publishing’s front door.

Penguin Books finally said yes.

(After three separate interviews, someone in HR apparently said, “Please give the girl a damn job.”)

From the moment I walked through those doors, I was home.

I was fortunate to start where I did — learning the parts and the whole and gaining a foundation that has supported a thriving career in publishing. But the more I awakened to the need for diversity, equity, and inclusion, the more I realised that “the way it has always been done” was no longer acceptable.

Publishing has grown from a colonised history of storytelling — one that has mostly failed to tell the varied and unique stories of people across humanity.

And yet, storytelling is the magic that keeps us returning to one another in a divided world.

Beneath all of this is something deeper:

I am drawn to people who are lit from within — who care deeply, who practice, who fail and try again, who light up when they talk about what they love. It is a reminder of what it feels like to be fully alive.

Today, I’m a multidisciplinary creative working across design, tech, and publishing, weaving knowledge and experience into an ecosystem that opens doors, shares knowledge, and provides a principled space where writers feel seen, supported and inspired.