Astrid is an educator and researcher dedicated to social and climate justice. At Future Women she works towards social justice in the workplace, and as a PhD Candidate at the University of Melbourne she explores environmental responsibility in publishing during the climate crisis. In 2023 she was one of Creative Australia’s inaugural Creative Climate Fellows.
Astrid is also a bibliophile and literary critic. She hosts The Garret: Writing and Publishing and has interviewed more than 250 of Australia’s most prominent writers and publishers. She regularly moderates literary events and judges literary prizes, and is the Chair of Judges for the 2025 Stella Prize.
Astrid is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and is dedicated to arts and health governance. In 2024 she was appointed to the Board of Central Highlands Rural Health.
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). She was also a National Advocate for MS Australia (2015-2022).
She is also one half of Bad Producer Productions, an independent podcast company specialising in arts and sport storytelling (she represents the Arts part).
Between 2018 and 2024 Astrid taught in the Associate Degree of Professional Writing and Editing at RMIT University, and served as Program Coordinator for two of those years.
In 2021 Astrid contributed to the anthology Growing Up Disabled in Australia and made her debut appearance on Q+A in 2021. 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 Australian Institute of Company Directors and the Australian Society of Authors. Astrid is also a member of Mensa Australia.
You can track her reading on The StoryGraph.