Edwina Shaw is a Queensland-based writer and editor working across fiction, memoir, and screenplays. Her most recent book, Dear Madman, is a true crime memoir that explores the truth behind a family tragedy. Her debut novel, Thrill Seekers, inspired by her brother’s experience with schizophrenia, was shortlisted for the 2012 NSW Premier’s Awards. During the pandemic in 2020, she also released A Guide Through Grief- First Aid for Your Heart and Soul.
More than 40 of Edwina’s short works have appeared in Australian and international journals, including Best Australian Stories, Griffith Review, Island, Grieve, and Asia Literary Review. In 2018, her screenplay M received Screen Queensland funding. She is also the editor of Bjelke Blues and co-editor of Our Inside Voices and Queersland.
Since 2005, Shaw has taught creative writing at the University of Queensland, for the QLD Writers Centre, and in community settings. She has led Relax and Write Retreats since 2017 and now co-facilitates international retreats with Kerstin Pilz in Bali, Vietnam, Italy, and Byron Bay through Transformational Writing Retreats. Edwina is deeply interested in the healing power of story and is also an experienced yoga teacher with a daily practice spanning more than 33 years. She lives on unceded Ugarapul Country (Ipswich), in a 160-year-old stone cottage filled with secrets. She writes because she can’t stop.