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About Maureen Helen
Maureen Helen trained as a nurse and midwife. She worked as a registered nurse in a variety of positions in hospitals, schools, aged care facilities and Aboriginal health care. In 1991 she was employed at Jigalong in the Pilbara region of Western Australia , where she provided primary health care for the Martu community.
Building on her experience in the health care system she pursued new interests and academic and career opportunities. She has been a tutor in sociology at a Curtin University of Technology, a relationship counsellor, project officer, manager, welfare advocate and the chief executive officer of a non-government agency.
She retired from the full-time, paid workforce on her sixty-fifth birthday and, in fulfilment of a childhood dream, completed a Doctor of Philosophy (Writing) degree at Edith Cowan University in 2006.
She has six children and thirteen grandchildren, and lives with her husband, John Fleming, near the beach at Scarborough in Western Australia.
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Always a scribbler, Maureen Helen has published short stories, book reviews, a variety of articles including travel pieces, and poetry.
One of her short stories, ‘Reconciliation,' for which she was awarded first prize in a competition sponsored by the Karrinyup Writers Club Incorporated, was included in Kingfisher Collection ( Karrinyup: Optima Press, 2003). Another short story, ‘No Ordinary Picnic,' was published in And the Dance Goes On: An Anthology of Catholic Women's Writing (Commission for Australian Catholic Women, Mulgrave: John Garratt Publishing, 2005). She was awarded first prize in the Walter Stone Award (Fellowship of Australian Writers, NSW Inc.) in 2004, for an essay, ‘Irish Women in Australian Literature'.
Other People's Country is Maureen Helen's first book. In this memoir she recounts some of her experiences while she was at Jigalong. The book was included in the long list of best non-fiction books for the 2008 Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism. |
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Contact Maureen Helen
About the book -
Other People's Country |
