About Louisa
My 20+ media and publishing career has spanned working as a journalist, copywriter, editor, digital strategist and twice-published author, so storytelling and communications have been the running threads and themes in my life. I believe asking the right questions is powerful: to uncover a different story, a different strategy, the right information, a new perspective, the missing clue…
I studied Professional Writing & Editing at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology after a Bachelor of Arts (double major in Literature & Cinema – it was an accident, i took too many classes) at La Trobe University, Melbourne.
After graduation, I wrote health, business, lifestyle and psychology features for major magazines and newspapers including The Age, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, Elle, Vogue, Cosmopolitan and hundreds more print publications.
In 2006 and 2007 I travelled Australia while freelancing from my laptop and wrote my first travel memoir in 2008, Love & Other U-Turns on the experience. This was published by Allen & Unwin in 2010 and nominated for two awards. After print media’s collapse, I retrained as a digital communications strategist, working for Channel 9, NOVA FM, Melbourne University and large corporate agencies, and learnt an enormous amount about digital marketing and connecting with audiences online.
Writing and publishing my second memoir, A Letter From Paris, was one of the most difficult and fulfilling projects of my life. At certain points it seemed the impossible task: turn a story that spanned continents and decades and wars about a man I never knew and whose contemporaries had all passed away into a comprehensible manuscript (!). But it was through all I learned in the process that I created what became my first memoir program. I’m a passionate educator and strategist for writers and authors, and most of my online programs have come from a personal search for courses and coaches that I simply couldn’t find myself.
Traditional publishing is a strange and tough industry to crack, but I’ve always felt soothed by bookshops and libraries – comforted by the eternal nature of deep thought and the perspective that comes from writing and reflecting. To me, truth will always be more fascinating than fiction.
Everyone has a story. And it’s the meaning we make from our stories that determines our lives. I love writing and publishing, and i love educating others about mixing literary loves with commercial interests. That’s the real art – balancing a beautiful and personal and unique work with something that appeals to as wide an audience as possible! Because what’s the point in spending your life creating something incredible, if no-one ever gets to see it?
