Storytelling

Non-Fiction

Pages: 176 Ratings:

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Storytelling is a memoir looking at the itinerant childhood of a girl born to a Showie and a boxer. This whimsical piece charts the writer’s move from infancy in the backyard of a ‘fence’ in Melbourne, through her early childhood in WA, moving from a roadhouse on the Nullarbor to a Catholic boarding school in a ghost town. Moving to NSW in high school, the writer charts the rise and fall of her parents’ many business ventures and later, her time in a malevolent house where her childhood begins to unravel.

Mary Ann Hughes was born into a family of Showies. As a child, she spent time in Melbourne, then in WA on the Nullabor Plains, and after that in Coolgardie at a boarding school in WA. She completed high school in NSW and after travelling with the shows, became an encyclopaedia saleswoman, an aluminium cladding saleswoman, and then a secretary to an accountant. She completed a degree at the University of Newcastle, majoring in English Literature, before accompanying her second husband to Cambridge in the UK. When she returned, she completed a Ph.D. on ethnic literature before working as a tutor and a teacher.