Author, Sharyn Munro, will speak about her latest book, Peeping through my fingers, at Erina Library on February 9 as part of the NSW Seniors Week Festival.
Munro is the author of four books with the latest her first foray into fiction.
It is a collection of short stories linked by brief commentaries on her own evolving life.
Many of these stories are award-winners, but previously only available in literary journals or anthologies.
They are brought together for the first time under the umbrella theme of “childhood, old age … and the dangerous bits in between”.
Munro grew up on a small farm and orchard at Erina, and well remembers the district before the opening of Erina Fair, when it was rural.
She left the Coast in the mid-‘60s to attend Newcastle University but has visited often since.
She lived for decades, alone for the last 12 years, in a solar-powered mud brick cabin on her remote mountain wildlife refuge in the Upper Hunter Valley.
This was the setting for her first two non-fiction books, The Woman on the Mountain’ (Exisle 2007) and Mountain Tails (Exisle 2009).
Her third non-fiction book, Rich Land, Wasteland — how coal is killing Australia (Pan Macmillan/Exisle 2012), arose from her empathy with the people and places of the nearby Hunter Valley being devastated by runaway opencut coal mining.
In late 2014, she moved to be closer to family, to discover new wildlife and chronicle in her ongoing nature blog.
After her house was flooded in 2021, she moved to the mid north coast.
A few health scares made her determined to reclaim her creative path and the Peeping through my fingers collection is the first result.
The stories are sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, but always perceptive, as Munro turns from observing her wild animal neighbours to writing about her fellow humans.
As she enters her 75th year, Munro said she aims to use her way with words for both storytelling and activism.
“Our world needs both – to understand life and to save it,” she said.
All her books are available directly from her website – https://www.sharynmunro.com.
Her talk at Erina Library on February 9 will take place from 10-11am.
Source:
Media release, Jan 9
Sharyn Munro