Susan Hawthorne joined the Women’s Liberation Movement in 1973. She quickly volunteered at Melbourne’s Rape Crisis Centre and was active in student politics. She has organised writers’ festivals, been an aerialist in two women’s circuses and written on topics as diverse as war, friendship with animals, and mythic traditions. She writes non-fiction, fiction and poetry and her books have been translated into multiple languages. Her most recent non-fiction is Vortex: The Crisis of Patriarchy. She has taught English to Arabic-speaking women, worked in Aboriginal education and had teaching roles across a number of subject areas in universities including Philosophy, Women’s Studies, Literature, Publishing Studies and Creative Writing. She is Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities at James Cook University, Townsville. She has won awards in writing, publishing, the gay and lesbian community and in 2017 was winner of the Penguin Random House Best Achievement in Writing in the Inspire Awards for her work increasing people’s awareness of disability.