Welcome to my writing site. I was sixteen once (above left) and from that day to this (right) I’ve been writing: letters, diaries, memos, thousands of pages of essays and theses. I pursued an academic career, writing articles for learned journals and chapters in books. I am widely cited in many fields. I have said a bit about my academic writings on this site. Many are available online via the publishers and others are at Academia.edu (but see my recent Post on the dilemma of using Academia.edu in the age of AI).

I think of myself mainly as a creative writer now. It was my first love. I always wanted to be a writer but many things stopped me, not least the need to support three children. The academic career was a godsend and although it was not my greatest desire it gave me a range of unique experiences on which I still draw for many writing projects.

After retiring from active University life I began to explore a career in independent publishing, learning to manage the world of websites, domains, social media and everything that goes with being “indie”. Why? Why not try conventional/traditional publishing? The answer is a long story, which I will write one day soon. Meantime, I went the Amazon route, just as an experiment, and found it was demanding and complicated. Everything changes so fast. I set up several websites and published a couple of experimental short books to see what would happen. 

LINK TO MY AMAZON AUTHOR’S PAGE: here

Writing needs time, but it also needs place. I have been fortunate in having beautiful places to write in. I have lived in Sydney’s inner west since the early 1980s. The area has undergone a complete transformation in those forty years, definitely for the worse, but I still cling on. Living somewhere for so long creates an almost cellular link to place.

There are other writing places in my life. One is in the beautiful Blue Mountains west of Sydney, where I spend a lot of time now. And there is my favourite place on the Hawkesbury River. My grandfather Owen John Arnold acquired a couple of blocks of land in 1923 on a very remote part of the lower river and built a house there. The property is still in the family, and is a wonderful place to write. The banner photo above is a sunset view. Full moon nights are amazing too (below).

SUBSTACK: I have just opened a Substack publication, Dissatisfied Insects.

Dissatisfied Insects is about the practice and art of writing. It is named with reverence for the sounds of the insect world, reminding us how much we need a space for collective expression.  The cicadas and crickets chant together, turning their voices on and off, sometimes silenced by cold and terror, sometimes expanding with good-will and hope, aware of the beautiful natural world and trying to survive the forces hostile to it.

The site is free: just go to Substack, find Annette Hamilton@annettehamilton and Dissatisfied Insects is there. Follow, subscribe, comment.

I also write about art on a second WordPress site:

Annette Hamilton Art Writing From Australia

https://annette-hamilton-art-writing.com/

On Instagram:

anndemot for art and life

here

and annette_hamilton_writer for books and commentaries.

here