Westbury, Deb 1954-

views updated

WESTBURY, Deb 1954-
(Deborah Jean Westbury)

PERSONAL:

Born July 29, 1954, in Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia; married Robert Hood (a writer; divorced). Education: B.A., M.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Australia. Agent—Lateral Learning Speakers Agency, P.O. Box 646, Spit Junction, New South Wales 2088, Australia.

CAREER:

Artist, educator, and author. Works variously as a writing teacher, inspirational educator and speaker, poet, and sculptor; Five Islands Press, Wollongong, Australia, cofounder, beginning 1988; James Cook University, Queensland, Australia, writer in residence, 2000. Member, Poets' Union; member, Varuna Writers' Centre in the Blue Mountains.

MEMBER:

Australian Society of Authors.

WRITINGS:

Mouth to Mouth (poems), Five Islands Press (Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia), 1990, 2nd edition, Hodder Education (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1998.

(Editor and compiler) Do You Know Me: Macquaire Fields Women's Writing Anthology, Campelltown City Council (Campelltown, South Australia, Australia), 1991.

(Editor) Wish You Were Here: Writing from the Blue Mountains, Blue Mountains City Council (Katoomba, New South Wales, Australia), 1993.

(Editor) River Writing: New Poetry and Short Fiction from the Hawkesbury, Hawkesbury City Library (Windsor, New South Wales, Australia), 1994.

Our Houses Are Full of Smoke, Angus & Robertson (Pymble, New South Wales, Australia), 1994.

Surface Tension (poems), Five Islands Press (Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia), 1998.

Flying Blind (poems), Brandl & Schlesinger (Blackheath, New South Wales, Australia), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

Deb Westbury grew up on the coast of New South Wales, Australia, just south of Sydney, where she worked on her poetry and also shared her talents as a teacher. She has been publishing her poems since the mid-1970s, and her work is well known in Australian literary communities. Several of her poetry collections have been published by Five Islands Press in Wollongong, New South Wales, a cooperative publishing house that Westbury and several other poets established in 1988 to promote Australian poetry. Membership in the cooperative is based on the quality of work submitted, and the press is now one of the most well-respected publishers of poetry in the country. In an interview for HSC Online, Westbury remarked that she writes "because writing is a means of exploring and enjoying language … because writing is a means of achievement and satisfaction … [and] because I must."