DEAR KITTY
The Legacy of the Fatherland
A Memoir
For all our daughters, for Anne Frank, for Greta Thunberg
and the warrior-women who come after me.
And to all my wonderful friends and fellow-campaigners in
beautiful North-East Victoria, Australia who independently established the Albury-Wodonga Environment Centre in 1983.
Their work continues today.
DEAR KITTY is a search for belonging and identity -- a story of mothers and daughters, war and peace. Where do we fit in? Perhaps its not in an external place. Perhaps its somewhere within.
After years of disconnection from her family, teenaged MAGGIE rejoins them on a CANADIAN military base in GERMANY. Like Anne Frank, feeling unheard and in constant conflict with her mother, she sees parallels in The Diary of Anne Frank. Maggie's reflections in her own diary, 'Dear Kitty', encourages Maggie to examine family dynamics and accepted versions of history.
She carries this torch to a country town in AUSTRALIA -- and activism in the peace
and environment movement.
DEAR KITTY sits alongside war stories like The Diary of Anne Frank or Palestinian author Liana Badr’s,
A Compass for the Sunflower (The Women’s Press).
Other similar books are Swedish author Marianne Frederiksson’s Hanna’s Daughters, about the struggles of three generations of women, or Thomas & the Oaks, about family secrets in the context of war.
For its Australian context it fits with The Lost flowers of Alice Hart by Molly Ringland which tells of an Australian girl’s struggle to break through inherited trauma and find the strength to make a new life, or
A Room Made of Leaves by Kate Grenville because of its portrayal of the plight of women within the Australian cultural context.
FAIR GAME
Journeys into a world of girls, women and crones
An anthology of 20 short stories.
Podcast coming soon
Excerpt on my blog.
She remembered who she was, and the game changed.
Lalah Deliah
Includes:
TAKE-AWAY PIZZA IN ARNHEM LAND
Three friends from vastly different cultures confront their demons in Australia's remote Arnhem Land.
You don't want me to talk about
Native titles process being for the white man
You don't want me to talk at all
Most of the time you have your 'exotic' pets
You want me to nod, smile, and listen to you
And it doesn't really matter if I don't hear you
You don't want me to talk about
How I have got a voice
And you don't listen
False Claims of Colonial Thieves, Charmian Paperbark Green & John Kinsella. Magabala Books https://www.magabala.com/products/false-claims-colonial-thieves
AN ITINERANT CHILDHOOD
Memoir of an Army Brat
Podcast coming soon
How often do even well-meaning parents look into the eyes of their child and reflect on the child’s feelings, fears, hopes – or interpretations of life events as they unfold for them? And what if the child is living constantly in transit, moving in and out of the orbit of those closest to them – their parents, their siblings, their friends?
This story starts somewhere along that path, in Montreal, Canada. The decision had been made to leave England for what I was led to understand, was an unknown country, Canada. Somewhere I believed I had never been before. But within a few days of our arrival, memory fragments triggered uninvited scenes and anxious responses which I had no words to express, about which nobody thought to ask. That was just the start of it...
MOTHERLANDS
Nevertheless, She Persisted
Historical Fiction
Coming soon.
We never think to connect our personal issue to what’s happened to our parents or grandparents. We’re now learning that traumas experienced by previous generations can be biologically inherited --
Mark Wolynn, It Doesn't Start With You
MOTHERLANDS – Nevertheless, She Persisted is based on the lives of
my grandmother, Ethel, her sisters, her daughter and her granddaughter.
Ethel came from a line of Lancashire merchants, seamen, Mersey pilots, shipbuilders, rebels, Jacobite supporters, artists and landed gentry. Hers is a story is of personal loss and fierce resistance, of tragedy and struggle as she raises five children -- by herself. The story is set in the context of the rise of the women’s movement in Liverpool, spanning the Victorian Era, to the munitionettes and World War I through the Depression. to World War II. It is set in Liverpool, England home of the Cunard Line, Harland and Wolff shipbuilders and the port from which so many British emigrants left, including my family members.
In researching this story, I discovered how a pattern of unseen injury and suffering is passed from mother to daughter. Yet they persist. They struggle to keep their children alive, build lives and seek their tribe.
REVIEWS & SHORT STORIES
First prize for short stories published by World Writers' Collective Anthology of short stories
'Fair Game', 2019. 'Very touching. Anyone who has ever come close to such an encounter will relate[…] A really good read'.
'Blood and the Waterbaby', 2021
'Surviving Canadian Winter and the New Chevrolet', 2020
· 'Canadian Jam and the Magic of Martha Jiminez', 2017
'It is our pleasure to publish your article [on our website] and to admire such a beautiful story.' –
Martha Jiminez, Cuban artist working in sculpture, ceramics and paint. (Jan. 2017]
Speaker at the Beechworth ‘Writers, Readers and Poets Weekend' (WRAP) 2017
'I was thrilled to welcome the contribution of Magz Morgan to our ever-growing list of writers.
Magz' short stories formed the backbone of our new event, Open Can of Words. [...]
Magz was also a popular guest at WRAP17 poetry events including her public reading at Beechworth Post Office, in which she reflected on the art of writing to an enthralled local audience, and readings at Pennyweight winery'.
Daren John Pope, Vice-President, Beechworth Arts Council