Marion Taffe is a Melbourne-based writer who after a 20 year career as a journalist, decided to turn her hand to novel-writing. 

A graduate of the RMIT degree in Professional Writing and Editing, Marion was named Creative Industries Student of the Year in her graduating year of 2023. She was also runner-up in the Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers Prize (non-fiction) in 2022 and a recipient of a Varuna Residential Fellowship in 2023.

Marion’s novel ‘By Her Hand’ was released in early March by HarperCollins’s Fourth Estate and what an impressive, wondrous and exploration of an historical era along with some of its major players that I knew next to nothing about. 

‘By Her Hand’ is a book that examines the plight of women in the Kingdom of Mercia - a place now known as the English Midlands - in the 10th century and follows the story of a young farm’s girl’s fight to ensure she writes her own destiny.

I was thrilled to welcome Marion to the podcast recently to chat about her publishing journey, inspiration, research and more in this wide-ranging, fascinating chat.