Fellow women writers by chance

It was nice to meet Joy MacKenzie yesterday, a fellow woman writer. It was a chance meeting, via a Trademe sale and purchase. I was the purchaser. I tried to pay her twice. She invited us in (I had my daughter with me) while she went to check on her computer. Standing just inside her door was a bookcase. I recognized authors, New Zealand poets, short story collections and novels. Upstairs were more. It was like my bookshelf, a bit. I also have lots of books by New Zealand authors – it’s a commitment I hope we all make to each other – to buy and read each others books.

I applauded the woman I didn’t know yet, for her support of New Zealand writers and asked her if she writes and she said yes. She told me her husband writes and his name, but I didn’t know him. Then she told me her name, which is different from reading it in an email. Told to me, I recognized her name. She said she recognized my name too and we figured out we’d been published in the same anthology of short stories many years before: Me and Marilyn Monroe, edited by Cathie Dunsford.

For a short time we traded reasons for our writing trailing off: all my creative energy going in to my daughter and all my writing was academic; and Joy had been busy studying and teaching. But, thinking about Cathie again – she put a lot of effort in to encouraging women to write – she ran workshops, retreats and best of all she pulled together a few collections giving us a place to publish. If that kind of support is still around I’ve been missing it.

It was nice to meet a fellow woman writer. It’s been a while.