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 still publishing these occasionally and am widely cited in many fields. I have said a bit about my academic writings on this site. Many are also available online at Academia.edu.

But I think of myself first as a creative writer now. It was my first love, and first choice of career, but many things stopped me, not least the need to support three children. The academic career was a godsend and although it took me away from what I most wanted to do it gave me a range of extraordinary and unique experiences which I now find myself drawing on.

Finally I retired from an active University life and went back to writing, hoping it wasn’t too late for a “career” in independent publishing. I have had to learn all kinds of things nobody once needed to know to be a writer. One of the hardest has been learning to manage the world of websites, domains, social media and the rest. Authorship and readership is not what it was, and entering the writing world I have been inhabiting as a kind of ghostly presence for so long has been a challenge. 

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, at Rozelle, since the early 1980s. Athough the area has undergone a complete transformation in those forty years, definitely for the worse, I still cling on to being there. Living somewhere for so long creates an almost cellular link to place. There are very few of us original residents remaining in my street. Most of the wonderful trees surrounding the property have been removed. But there are still a few possums galloping across the roof although the owls seem to have departed.

There are other writing places in my life. My grandfather Owen John Arnold acquired a couple of blocks of land in 1923 on a very remote part of the Hawkesbury 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). I also write in the Blue Mountains, in the crispy air and swirling mists, but mostly I have been painting there in the past eight or so years, after finishing an Advanced Diploma in Painting at TAFE.

Time passes and everything changes. I’ve been through a lot recently including a serious illness which put the publications on hold for over a year. But I’m fine for now and doing final edits on a book of memoirs and two volumes of short stories which will be out soon. I hope they find readers, although my writer daughter says nobody these days will “get” them. Because they are set in the twentieth century they are classed as “historical”.

I also write about art. Visit Annette Hamilton Art Writing From Australia https://annette-hamilton-art-writing.com/

Instagram: There are two Instagram sites:

anndemot for art and life

here

and annette_hamilton_writer for books and commentaries.

here