Joanne Fedler

Biography

Fedler was born in South Africa and has studied law in both South Africa and the US. She has law degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand and from Yale which she attended on a Fulbright scholarship in 1993. She was a lecturer in law at the University of the Witwatersrand from 1994–1995. She now lives in Sydney with her husband and two children.

Books

Her first novel, The Dreamcloth, was published by Jacana Media in 2005. The Dreamcloth was nominated for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize in 2006. Jennifer Crocker wrote that "The Dreamcloth marks a watershed moment in South African fiction."

In 2006, her book Secret Mothers' Business was published in Australia by Allen & Unwin. It has also been published in South Africa and the United Kingdom, with rights sold in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Croatia. To date it has sold over 600,000 copies worldwide.

She is also the author of Things Without A Name, a contemporary love story set in the world of rape and domestic violence, published by Allen & Unwin (2008); When Hungry, Eat (2010), Allen & Unwin; It Doesn't Have to Be So Hard: the Secrets to Finding and Keeping Intimacy, (2012) Random House; The Reunion, published by Allen & Unwin (2012); and Love in the Time of Contempt: Consolation for Parents of Teenagers, Hardie Grant Books (2015).

Her latest book, Your Story: How to Write It so Others Will Want to Read It was published by Hay House in 2017.

Activism

Joanne Fedler has made appearances at the Sydney Writers Festival, the Jewish Sydney Writers Festival, the Dymocks Literacy Foundation Great Debate, and the Gidget Foundation to raise money for post-natal depression.

In 1996, she set up a legal advocacy centre to end violence against women of which she was the CEO until 1998.

Joanne was also one of the founding directors of Moonstone Media, which produces and publishes branded books designed to enhance organisations and businesses profiles in their markets. In 2006, Moonstone Media published A Pocketful of Sequins, a book of inspirational quotes by people whose lives have been affected by breast cancer for the three national breast cancer organisations in Australia to raise money for breast cancer research.

Joanne's mission

Over the past six years, Joanne have been working with ordinary women who are writing the ordinary stories of their lives.

It is her spiritual calling, her mission, to help women write and curate their stories as a collective act of conscious healing so that together, they can tip these narratives back into the world.

She believes that women’s stories – of growth, healing, transformation, creative endeavour – are the medicine this world needs now. When written from a place of deep knowing, with care and craft and conscientiousness, the personal voice speaks into the universal voice. And each time a woman stitches herself back into the fabric of life with words, she creates a groove for someone else in which to rest her own tremulousness. One woman’s courage breaks ground for others.

In a troubled world, she believes that it is the writer’s work to use his or her words to inspire, nourish and grow the spirit – our own, that of the reader, the planet, or the Great Spirit that runs through all things.

7 Day Free Writing Challenge

Each year, Joanne runs a seven-day free writing challenge online in which everyone is invited to participate. It is a free writing challenge where Joanne devotes her time to nourish aspiring writers and teach them about the craft of writing.

Author Awakening Adventure

Twice a year, Joanne runs her unique and transformational writing course, the Author Awakening Adventure. It is an eight-week online course where she shares her unique framework for turning writers and wanna-be authors into authors.

Writing Retreats

Once a year, Joanne takes a group of women on writing retreats to Fiji, Bali or Tuscany.