Astrid is a bibliophile. She is the host of The Garret: Writers on Writing and has interviewed more than 200 of Australia’s most prominent writers and publishers.
Astrid is an ongoing teacher in the Associate Degree of Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT University and sometimes judges literary prizes, including the 2023 Stella Prize. In 2023 she began a PhD at the University of Melbourne exploring potential and perceived barriers to publishing and selling climate fiction in Australia.
She is also one half of Bad Producer Productions, an independent podcast company specialising in arts and sport storytelling (she represents the Arts part).
Astrid is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. In 2023 she joined the Consumer Advisory Committee (a subcommittee of the Alfred Health Board) for a three year term. She previously served on the Victorian Disability Advisory Council advising the Minister for Disability, Ageing and Carers (2019 to 2022). She is the former Chair of Melbourne Writers Festival (2019-2022) and the former Deputy Chair of Writers Victoria (2014-2018).
In 2021 Astrid contributed to the anthology Growing Up Disabled in Australia and made her debut appearance on Q+A in 2021. She regularly moderates and participates in panels at literary festivals, and you can read her book reviews in The Age/Sydney Morning Herald and Australian Book Review, among others. She previously received grants from the Australia Council for the Arts (2017 and 2018) and The Copyright Agency (2017 and 2019).
Before embarking on this creative storytelling career, Astrid was an economics and policy consultant for almost a decade. She specialised in climate and social policy, and to this day she is trying to figure out how stories can help to save the planet.
Astrid’s professional memberships include the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL), the Society of the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP), and the Australian Society of Authors (ASA). Astrid is also a member of Mensa Australia.
You can track her reading on The StoryGraph.
