In Part 1 of this interview, Editor Pauline Hopkins and poet Sandy Jeffs talk about the Spinifex Press anthology, "It's All Connected. Feminist Fiction and Poetry".
In Part 2 of this interview, poets Patricia Sykes, Angela Costi and Marion May Campbell talk about their works in the anthology along with editor Pauline Hopkins.
Pauline Hopkins is an editor at Spinifex Press and a bookseller. She majored in psychology at university and completed further studies in English and Professional Writing and Editing. She has worked in local government, as a speechwriter and media adviser in state government. She is an avid swimmer, has been a swim teacher, swim coach and lifeguard. She volunteers in the health sector.
Sandy Jeffs was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1976 when it was considered something from which you could not recover. In the 1980s, she was among the first wave of people who started speaking publicly about living with a mental illness. Much of her writing has been about her struggle with schizophrenia. Sandy has published eight volumes of poetry and a memoir, Flying with Paper Wings: Reflections on Living with Madness. Sandy co-authored with Margaret Leggatt, Out of the Madhouse: From Asylums to Caring Community? which won the oral history prize at the 2020 Victorian Community History Awards. Her most recent book is The Poetics of a Plague: A Haiku Diary, about the 2020-21 pandemic.
The anthology, It's All Connected. Feminist Fiction and Poetry, is available from Spinifex Press: www.spinifexpress.com.au/shop/p/9781925950564
Production and Interview: Tina Giannoukos
Di Cousens, Indrani Perera, Tina Giannoukos, and Waffle IronGirl