More about Diana

I’m a writer, journalist and teacher and live 50/50 in Sydney and at Foxground on the NSW south coast, Australia.

Whale Rock is my latest book. It grew out of several experiences. When I was a journalist in Nicaragua in the mid- 80s I heard a rumour about a military hospital where traumatised soldiers were being treated. I felt my boyfriend at the time was suffering some kind of “war trauma” – now known as PTSD. He’s not Rafael though!

Later, after I got married in the 90s, I had two stillbirths within eight months of each other. The character, Shannon, was born from that experience. She is definitely not me. Men often suffer in silence when their partners have miscarriages or stillbirth and the character, Tom, came from that. Otherwise the novel is a total work of fiction! I started working on it in the form of a novel when I did a Master of Arts in Creative and Cultural Practice at Western Sydney University in 2012.

I pour all my trauma, tragedy, humour, sense of fun and way of seeing the world into my writing. It’s a release. I couldn’t live without writing (or music). It has kept me going through the darkest times and helped me find a way to reconnect with the world.  I write for the world to know what’s going on inside my head, to tell stories that aren’t always told, to express my love of nature, to show the humour behind the seriousness of common discussions, to show a different point of view, to make fun of the world, to break down the barriers and taboos, to show emotions that are often ignored, to sense imagery, to make myself laugh, to take the mickey out of people but also show their goodness, to try and break down my own cynicism about the world and about people, to find truth in a world full of different realities, to heal my own hurt and to make sense of it.

I’m now working on a new novel, The Cedar-getter’s Granddaughter. It is about finding connections in unlikely places: between the present and the past, the old and the young, to Country and a cause. 

The novel begins in 1826, where Meg (Magenta Mulholland), an former Irish convict, travels to the Illawarra to work the cedar with her husband. Meg’s dream of creating a new life is challenged when she has to give birth and raise her baby in the forest, and when she becomes implicated in a murder. 

Nearly two hundred years later, Meg’s great- great-great granddaughter, Jean, comes across some old family photographs. Jean contemplates her family’s past when she befriends Billy, a skinny, 19-year-old activist fighting against State Forestry’s logging of bushfire-affected native forest. Their friendship is an unlikely one: Jean, a 62-year-old, volunteer firefighter, unlucky in love, is a descendent of the cedar-getters and timber works and initially has no sympathy for the tree-huggers. But as their friendship grows, Jean begins to see things differently. As Jean becomes radicalised and joins the activists’ fight for the forest, the split community turns against her.

As her future becomes worth fighting for, her curiosity about the past is piqued. Eventually Jean discovers the truth about Meg and the parallels between their stories become clear. Eventually, like her great, great grandmother before her, Jean gets caught up in a fight that is bigger than she realises and is faced with her own dilemma. 

 I am the recipient of a cultural grant from Kiama Council and I have also been developing this project as part of the Emerging Writers Mentoring Program with my mentor, Emma Darragh.

My other project is a musical with Broome musician and artist Arnold Pudding Smith based on a song he wrote about us in the early 80s, Cornelius and Rosalind.

 My play, Havana, Harlem, about Fidel Castro, Celia Sanchez and Che Guevara in Harlem in 1960, was an official selection of the 2010 Sydney Fringe. Previously it was work-shopped in Manila, The Philippines. I was also an inaugural Writer in Residence at the New Theatre in Newtown and had a residency at the National Playwrights conference in Adelaide. I would love to see this produced on a mainstage — off Broadway perhaps?

I’m also the co-author with Ollie Smith of the memoir, Raging Partners (Magabala, 2000), which was shortlisted for the Community Relations Commission Award of the 2001 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. It documents our friendship to a background of reporting indigenous issues, particularly in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

My respected book about coping with difficult pregnancies, Taking Control How to Aim for a Successful Pregnancy After Miscarriage, Stillbirth or Neonatal Loss, was published in 1997 by Doubleday (Transworld Publishers).

I am also the author/editor of four books and three chapters in other books related to the media and indigenous and multicultural issues, including a guide for international media on Aboriginal issues published for the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 - Getting it Right, A Journalist’s Guide to Working with indigenous Communities during the Sydney 2000 Olympics, (NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs and SOCOG, 2000) and a book for Indigenous people on how to handle the media, Going for Red Black and Gold: The Indigenous Media Manual. (Editor. Jumbunna Centre, UTS. 1994).

My chapter on the Cootamundra Girls Home forms part of the official oral history of the stolen generations - Many Voices: Reflections on experiences of indigenous child separation published in 2002 by the National Library.

I co-ordinated and edited a ground-breaking Indigenous history of inner Sydney, working with UTS journalism students: Other Boundaries: Inner-city Aboriginal Stories, Part One of an Aboriginal history of the Leichhardt municipality of Sydney. (Research grant, Jumbunna Centre, UTS, 1993.) And I co-edited Signposts - a journalist's guide to reporting Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and ethnic affairs. (UTS, 1991.)

Part of this information forms Aboriginal people and ‘community’ in the Leichhardt municipality, a chapter in Minorities: cultural diversity in Sydney, edited by Shirley Fitzgerald and Garry Wotherspoon. (State Library of NSW Press, 1995).

As a freelance journalist I write regularly on the environment, the arts, travel, entertainment, as well as profiles. My journalism work has included being Travel Editor at Australian Associated Press and a senior features and profile writer there, covering lifestyle issues and the arts. I was short-listed for a Kennedy Award (environmental writing) for my feature on the Darling River, for Australian Geographic.

I did my cadetship at the Sydney Morning Herald and reported on Aboriginal affairs and social issues from the Canberra Press Gallery in the 70s. I was The Age’s and USA Today's stringer in Central America, AAP's West Australian correspondent and a producer and trainer of Indigenous journalists on the ground-breaking SBS TV program, First in Line. I’ve also been a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney. I am a course module author on Backpack Journalism at the Open School of Journalism (www.openschoolofjournalism.com).

As a travel writer and for my own pleasure I’ve travelled all over the world including more than 30 countries as well as most parts of Australia and New Zealand. My articles are published widely, including MINDfood, Australian Associated Press, Australian House and Garden, the Canberra Times, the West Australian, the Newcastle Herald, The Saturday Paper, the Adelaide Advertiser, the Sunday Times, Seniors magazine and the Illawarra Mercury, the University of Sydney's Alumni magazine, Holidays with Kids, Signature, Five Star Kids and scores of websites.

In the mid 1990s I  ran my own media consultancy business, specialising in the arts, indigenous and community issues - Diana Plater Media. I helped co-ordinate publicity for The Festival of the Dreaming - the first Olympic Arts Festival - and was also a publicist with A Sea Change, the second Olympic Arts Festival. For  10 years I co-ordinated the publicity for first Sorry Day and then for the Journey of Healing on behalf of the National Sorry Day Committee and the Aboriginal Stolen Generations.