Anne Howell writer

I cut my teeth as a young writer on The Sydney Morning Herald where I reported on news and wrote features, became a police roundsperson and arts editor of the lift out section, The Eastern Herald. I worked as a features editor on Follow Me, a glossy Sydney-based arts, fashion and lifestyle magazine. Then everything changed: I was diagnosed with a rare life-threatening condition of the outer brain. My health deteriorated. I was in late pregnancy at the time. After neurosurgery, complications resulted in losing my memory. Completely. It would become an extended case of full blown retrograde amnesia; rare in life, common in fiction. However, my ability to write and my memory gradually returned. In 2022, my book about this experience was published in a memoir titled All That I Forgot (see below). During my recovery from amnesia I raised a child, and taught myself to read and write again.

After making a sea change, I gravitated back towards the newsroom. I worked as a Fairfax reporter for the Illawarra Mercury and The Advertiser in their Wollongong offices. I then took on the editorship of a small, street magazine called Sparx that trained emerging writers and reported on local events.

In 2013, while working for a refugee and migrant support centre in Blacktown, I completed a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Wollongong.