About

Helen Hagemann lives on the sunset coast of Western Australia. She writes novels, short stories, prose poetry and free verse poetry. Helen discovered creative writing when at university. She quickly discovered after enrolling in an English Major that there was an opportunity to reach academic achievement (i.e. graduate) by writing "verse".

So, in 1994, there was this type of infusion, a combustibility, a sort of chemical reaction that took place in her head. She thought, 'what an easy way to get through university by writing a few lines of poetry?' This she thought would be a cinch, and kept to that stream, anything else and she would have drowned!

However, little by little, she noticed that the poetry required a lot of work, so too the many English essays: Literary Studies 1 & 2, Literary Theory, and oh, Contemporary Critical Practice, Semiotics, not to mention Semantics, whaaa? Her mind boggled with all that confusion, her thoughts raced with all that study, swatting, the late hours, no sleep, a n d  hubby at home grizzling about his tea not cooked on time, asking things like 'where was she?'

She was 47 at the time and l o v e d e v e r y m i n u t e o f i t. This was amazing since her last high school report said she'd make a good librarian. Librarian, Duh!

To cut a long story short, Helen Hagemann now holds an MA in writing. Has written one novel (a sort of memoir), is currently writing her second novel The Ozone Café, has 2 e-books of poetry and has a chapbook Evangelyne & Other Poems, published by the Australian Poetry Centre, Melbourne, 2009 (after winning a Macquarie/Varuna publishing scholarship in 2008).

So Helen's advice to all those die-hards out there, who think that it's too hard, or you're too old, or hubby/partner will not be supportive, don't take any notice of that draining negativity. Just do it! It will save your life.