About Lisa MacLeod

Best Selling Author

My Story

My earliest memories are of Canada, where most of my relatives still live. My family moved to Australia in my teenage years, and I have lived in Australia since. I consider myself a joint citizen of both countries, and my strange accent verifies my background and identity. I currently live in southern NSW in an endlessly, and slowly progressing, renovator’s delight with my husband, a collection of books, unfinished furniture restorations and clutter.

I have always been an avid reader and enjoyed writing conversational letters to family overseas, often trying my hand at the odd poem. I had secret ambitions to write short stories or novels, but my writing confidence and any aspirations I kept were utterly obliterated at University. I still remember the precise feedback I received from one of my sociology lecturers for an essay I had written. “I have never encountered such a disturbing mix of good ideas and sloppy, even slovenly writing.” After that feedback, I just focused on concisely presenting arguments and getting through my study.

I have worked in hospitality, tried my hand at catering, been a research assistant and worked training people with disabilities, on-the-job in a range of occupations, including bricklaying. Naturally, I was much younger/fitter then. For the past decade or so, I have worked in several welfare capacities, most recently with young, homeless people. This experience has been the inspiration for my first novel, the first in a series about three young girls’ journeys into, and experiences of, homelessness. My goal for the series is to raise awareness of youth homelessness and for readers to know how this might feel if it happened to someone they know and love.

There are other social justice issues that I am passionate about and want to explore through storytelling. Better late than never.