The Women’s Pool is out this month. Also in November—my SUMMER 21 WRITING WORKSHOP kicks off on the 18th. Register your interest or get straight on to booking yourself in now. I’m hearing that quite a few of you want to use the workshop to kickstart your writing again after some time off: perfect. And to stay focused on a project well underway: also perfect. Combine it with NaMoWriMo if you like. Click here more info: shorturl.at/izDEO
The Women’s Pool is a collection of memoirs and histories that celebrate Australia’s only women’s pool. Editor and writer, Lynne Spender, gathered these stories to honour the pool’s history and singular existence: McIver’s Ladies Baths will be one hundred years old in 2022. The contributions are as diverse as the women who’ve swum and gathered there over the many decades and seasons.
‘You need thalassa therapy, the woman said to me…In the early morning before the day has told you what it is going to be like, take yourself into the sea.’
‘Morning thalassa’, Jane Messer, the women’s pool
The history of Coogee’s McIver’s Ladies Baths is told in these stories from women who have found friendship, sanctuary and sheer pleasure as they have gathered and swum at ‘the Women’s Pool’.
Lynne Spender, editor. Spinifex Press (print/ebook, $26.95).
The ancient seasonal cycles find their own rhythm at our pool, at our place of ‘women’s business’. In the vastness of the largest Continent on Earth, it is a tiny space of companionship if wanted, or solitude if needed.
Mary Goslett, ‘Women’s business’
