About
A South Australian writer who sold most of it, kept the words, and went looking for the rest.
Colleen Moyne is a published Australian writer and poet, currently living and travelling full-time in a campervan with her greyhound, Winter.
Poetry was her first love and remains at the centre of her work, but her writing moves freely through memoir, travel, horror, crime, short fiction, articles and reviews. She has also spent years on the less glamorous end of the craft — blogs, newsletters, business documents — which she maintains is where a writer really learns to be clear.
She completed studies in Professional Writing in 2013 and went on to certify in Freelance Writing and Non-Fiction Writing. Her poems and short stories have since appeared in over 50 anthologies worldwide, and her work has been adapted for radio and audio.
Her first solo collection, Time Like Coins, was published by Ginninderra Press in late 2018 and was later nominated for an Anne Elder Award. Called to Coddiwomple followed in 2023 — part memoir, part poetry, and the book in which the van first appears.
The campervan is named Trevor. Together they have covered a good deal of Australia, including Tasmania, and the travelling has become inseparable from the writing.
It turns out that a life measured in fuel stops and free camps is very good material. The places are only half of it; the rest is the people met briefly and remembered for years, and the particular quality of thinking that happens on a long stretch of road with nothing much to look at.
That journey produced Called to Coddiwomple, and it is still producing — the work-in-progress currently going by Van Life Stories.
She also shares the everyday of the road — the detours, the free camps and the odd corner of the map — under her travel banner Where to Today in SA, for anyone who likes to follow along on Facebook and Instagram.
Winter
The greyhound.
Winter travels in the back — the only place for a big dog — and as far as she is concerned it is the best seat in the van. Thunderstorms don’t trouble her and a strange campsite doesn’t faze her; she takes the whole business in her stride and is always up for an adventure.
She appears in the writing more often than she has agreed to.
Teaching
Colleen has established writers’ groups and delivered courses, workshops, mentoring and creative-writing sessions for adults and children. Everything is arranged by enquiry — the road makes a fixed timetable difficult.
Writing courses and workshops for adults and children, across different forms and stages of writing.
One-to-one support for a piece of writing, a project, or a habit you are trying to build — including help finding a direction when you know you want to write something, but not yet what.
Colleen has established, organised and taken part in writers’ groups, and is glad to talk to anyone starting one.