Welcome. I am Anne Howell, Dr. Anne to some. This is where I introduce you to my interest in exploring amnesia, memory loss and memory retrieval on the written page. Memory wasn’t a topic I initially thought I would pursue, but life had other ideas.
Novel in the wings
My new novel On Judas Beach reimagines Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights in contemporary coastal Australia. It is being proofed as of March 2026.
The resurfacing of suppressed memories is at the heart of this novel, which evokes contemporary concerns while retelling the Brontë classic, opening with a freak weather event. The novel draws on pivotal elements of Wuthering Heights, exploring class conflict, nature versus culture, forbidden love, and revenge.
All That I Forgot
What if you woke up in hospital one day thinking you were a girl aged nine, when instead you were a grown woman with a child? While it prompted my publishers to promote it as ‘a gripping true story that reads like a psychological thriller’, what I have written was actually the stuff of my life.
My memoir All That I Forgot, 2022, Bad Apple Press, is available on Amazon Australia (hardcover) and select Australian and New Zealand bookstores. For online purchase go to Amazon AU.
What they said
Richard Fidler, Conversations, RN
‘When Anne Howell woke from a coma in 1991, she thought she was a nine-year-old girl.
She was, in fact, a woman in her 30s who had a baby and a partner and an adult life full of adult characters she couldn’t quite place.
Anne had a serious case of retrograde amnesia, and with no real understanding who she could trust, the former journalist set about rediscovering who she was and who she could become.’
Tom Flood, Flood Manuscripts
‘Stranger than fiction this extraordinary amnesiac memoir will have you wondering if it’s better to remember to forget.’
– Tom Flood
Musician and author’s 1989 novel, Oceana Fine won The Vogel National Award, The Miles Franklin and the Victorian Premier’s Award.
The Australian, Tina Allen
‘All That I Forgot is a powerful story, simply told, of an ordinary woman experiencing extraordinary events …‘
‘Howell’s book is a memoir and it is also a page tuner. The reader feels compelled to discover answers Howell herself had to ask …‘
Tina Allen is the author of Bill Gibson: Biography of the pioneering cochlear implant surgeon. She is also a medical writer and reviewer of books.
Mike Cavanagh
‘Read this memoir. If you have any interest in what happens in that mushy grey thing between your ears; if you’ve ever wondered who you really are; if not knowing what comes next in a story intrigues you; if you just like a story told with an economy of words and unwavering honesty… then read All That I Forgot… ‘
– Mike Cavanagh
Mike Cavanagh is the author of four memoirs, including One of its Legs are Both the Same .
Background to All That I Forgot
In 2022, my memoir about the first three years of waking from a coma with retrograde amnesia, All That I Forgot, was published by a small supportive publisher, Bad Apple Press.
I cut my teeth as a writer on The Sydney Morning Herald as a staff journalist for six years, covering news, writing features and the arts editor of the lift out section The Eastern Herald. I worked as features editor on Follow Me, a Sydney-based arts and fashion magazine. Then I was diagnosed with a rare life-threatening condition of the outer brain. I was in the late stages of pregnancy. I had a choice: maybe I had five years left to live or undergo a risky 12-hour operation. Fortunately, I had a brilliant surgeon.
After the neurosurgery, random complications resulted in a full blown case of retrograde amnesia; rare in life, common in fiction. This was in 1991 and while my ability to read and write at the beginning was negligible, eventually, painstakingly, my memories returned and so did my ability to read and write.