Sara Hardy Writes

  Festive freebie - Smashwords End of Year sale. Download your free copy of A SECRETIVE LIFE. Gift yourself or gift a friend via Smashwords - the bookshop for independent authors and publishers. It's easy, just login to gain your gift of a 5 star novel. 'I loved it' - Miriam Margolyes. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1101126 Sale ends 1st January 2024. And please post a review somewhere if you liked it! A SECRETIVE LIFE: Cecilia is unrepentant as she looks back over a queer life defined by lesbian love and dangerous adventure. She’s been through two world wars, enjoyed the decadence of Weimar Berlin (Gay Capital of the World) and lived to be Out & Proud. Now she’s cornered. Her bittersweet story captures the glittering LGBTQ+ underworld of the 20th century. 'A DELICIOUS READ' - Pamela Rabe.

  I recently returned from a brief holiday at a B&B called The Burrow at Wombat Bend, a wonderful mudbrick cottage set in a wildlife retreat at Dixon's Creek in the Yarra Valley, about an hour north-east of Melbourne. I have been meaning to go there for many, many years - since I'd published The Unusual Life of Edna Walling in fact, because during my research for that biography I had met Sue Forrester, the daughter of one of Edna's dear friends - and Wombat Bend is Sue's home and co-creation. 'The Burrow' is the B&B mudbrick cottage that overlooks a vast billabong surrounded by all manner of native trees and plants - and native wildlife, including wombats. This paradise was once a basic cow paddock and its creation echoes Edna Walling's magnificent self-made Bickleigh Vale Village in nearby Mooroolbark - also once a cow paddock. (See previous blogs re Walling's career as a landscape designer etc.) Sue and I had much to catch up on - and I wished ...

  Sometimes it's good to simply listen. If you'd like to hear me talking for over 50 minutes (!) about the wonderful Australian Landscape Designer, gardener, architect, artist, photographer, author... well, all round fabulous woman - please go here for the podcast:  https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/infinite-women/embed/episodes/Sara-Hardy-on-Edna-Walling-e2a2u32 The podcast begins with my introduction to Edna Walling (see below) - then it broadens into an in-depth discussion across many aspects of Edna Walling’s life. I am indebted to Allison Tyra and her ‘Infinite Women’ podcast for inviting me to be interviewed for her series celebrating extraordinary women in history. Introduction: Edna Walling was a landscape designer, gardener, horticulturalist, journalist, photographer, author – and fine drawer and painter of her watercolour garden design plans. Born in England in 1895, Edna was a trouser-wearing, animal-and-Nature-loving, highly individual being. Her legacy has...

  Oh what a wonderfully witty, clever, funny, moving, lesbian, queer, feminist queer, and super queer-queer TV series While The Men Are Away  is! Oh and sexy, I forgot to mention across-the-spectrum sexy - and that too is very cleverly portrayed. This really is one out of the box and congrats to SBS, Australia's Special Broadcasting Service, for choosing to back this project and the vastly experienced team behind it. The plot is based on a simple premise: While the men are away fighting in WWII, gorgeous Frankie, an Italian immigrant married to an Australian farmer who is 'away', enlists two Women's Land Army recruits, a (bi-sexual?) draft dodger, and her Indigenous farmhand to help run the family farm. What could go wrong? And indeed, what could go queerly right? The story is told in eight 28 minute segments, and they pack such a lot into that small space! The series premiered on 27th September 2023 and can be viewed/binged on demand here: https://www.sbs.com.au/ondema...

Edna Walling, the brilliant landscape designer, gardener and all round artist extraordinaire, worked very hard on her own and other people's gardens, yet she liked to remind us in her books and journalism that the primary function of said garden was to sit amongst it and enjoy it! Relax and read and dream or doze. Edna Walling also said that she most enjoyed Nature's own groupings, the more accidental the better. I was reminded of this this morning when looking at our clump of lilies - and noticing that a beautiful purple iris had presented herself to add to the display. I love these surprises. Edna Walling openly referred to herself as 'odd' or 'a misfit' in her time (1895-1973) - today I think she'd happily accept the word 'queer'. I have very interesting, indeed exciting news to tell in the near future about this extraordinary woman - and a certain feature film project ... watch this space! Oh, and while you're here, I've been told that th...

  There's a fabulous radio program on JOY Radio - Melbourne's wonderful LGBTQI+ local station - where writers of all types are interviewed every Saturday between 1 and 2 pm by members of a wonderful team pictured below. They really know their stuff and give great interview! I had the pleasure and honour of experiencing this first hand last week as I was interviewed by Loretta and Rob. I think it must be the most enjoyable and relaxed live radio conversation about 'me and my writing' that I've ever experienced. It really was a joy, and I highly recommend this program. Here's a link to listen; my bit starts about 8 minutes in and lasts 40 minutes. You can search the website for lots of fab interviews with wonderful writers, and download the podcasts:    https://joy.org.au/ takemetoyourreader/2023/09/03/ lesbian-playwright-biographer- and-novelist-sara-hardy-talks- about-her-early-life-coming- out-and-writing-in-different- genres-2nd-sept-2023/ Joy 94.9 FM

 Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO * By chance, I had the great pleasure to meet Deborah Cheetham Fraillon - an exceptional, wonderful, spirited Yorta Yorta woman. I think I may have gushed a bit, but she was very gracious. Deborah is an Aboriginal Australian soprano, composer, educator, actor, playwright, leader and advocate for all things Musical, Aboriginal and Queer(ical). We had a brief exchange as we played musical chairs at it were, I had just given an interview at local radio station 3MBS about my novel and she about to give an interview about The Australian Ballet's production of Identity 'The Hum' for which she composed the music. I saw the production a few days later. Deborah's music was extraordinary, in fact I closed my eyes at times just to concentrate on it. I've never heard anything quite like it - dramatic (a thunderous big drum beat to begin), lyrical, forceful, diverse... And, would you believe: fascinatingly, wonderfully, Deborah's wife, Nicolette...

  Two well-placed cherries and Miriam Margolyes has us in her sights, outrageously and wittily provocative as ever.  Who would have thought that British VOGUE would choose an 82 year old (in her own words:) 'fat old lesbian' as their featured celebrity for Pride Month? Is there nothing this wonderful woman cannot do?! She's achieving more and more as she ages. What an example. Apart from her impressive acting career, in the last few years she's produced a best selling memoir, and is currently working on a follow up book. Her TV travel documentaries are highly entertaining and provocative, every adventure spurred on by her fearless guiltless and at times very lewd honesty. What a lesbian icon to have in our midst. Brava! Oh Miriam! Stories from an Extraordinary Life   by Miriam Margolyes (John Murray Press) will be published on 14 September 2023. And watch the video: British Vogue presents 'In The Bag' with Miriam Margolyes - a must see revelation of the stuff sh...

International Lesbian Visibility Day is upon us, not that it's going to get much notice. This Day, and in some places Week, goes by without much fanfare unless you already have it in your calendar. I've been thinking about the concept of visibility  and lesbian and what that might mean in practical terms these days. How do we lesbians 'do' visibility when we're not doing Dykes-on-Bikes etc in the Mardi Gras Parade? When Australia's notorious and injurious 2017 Plebiscite on Gay Marriage/Same Sex Marriage worked up a head of furious indignation in certain "NO" quarters, I took to wearing a lesbian badge as a proud visible identifier - something I hadn't done since the 70s and 80s. As an older lesbian I don't really look like a lesbian any more - partly because, as an older woman I've become completely invisible - unless I start making a big fuss about something: at the drinks bar, in the queue, or just walking along the blasted footpath! I ...

  Doesn't matter what your background, it's happening more frequently to older women coping alone. : You're going along fairly fine, and then you trip over a mound of rotten luck, or some person does the nasty on you, or a catastrophic thing is inflicted upon your person and THUMP - down you go, the slide to the depths. Maybe you sink down slowly or maybe you fall head first, either way, the unthinkable happens: you're an older woman and you're homeless.  The above photo is of me - In the late 1970s I was a young lesbian living in London performing a 'Bag Lady' in a play which toured around schools. I was with a Theatre In Education company called Half Moon. On one distressing occasion when I was loitering in a school corridor before making my 'surprise' entrance, the school caretaker spotted me and attempted to escort me off the premises! I had based my character on Gladys, a real homeless woman who lived near me in a bombed out house (because there...

  This poem plays off Gertrude Stein's codes for making love with Alice B Toklas ('cow' and 'button'); it also gives a nod to Joelle Taylor's raunchy yet fragile depiction of dykes in bars. See book references at the end. The Tender Button Bar   - by Sara Hardy   Two wives walk into a bar Hand in hand     speaking their day with word play yoo hoo coo hoo woo hoo      tending their intention      with finger-press and word-caress                        understanding   * Bois boys girls girrls other other          highlight their faces and find their places      moving through the bar King of spades Queen of clubs Ring of diamonds Jack of all trades          bruise or amuse   a...