Brenda Berrisford and building confidence

Brenda moved to Perth from England with her family in 1970. She wears many hatsincluding retired librarian, oral storyteller and writer of poetry and short stories.In the 70s she enrolled at WAIT (now Curtin University) in Library Studies. Duringthis time she worked in high school libraries and discovered the Storytelling Guild ofWA in 1983, of which she is a Life Member. After graduating she started her ownbusiness, combining libraries and storytelling.She has travelled widely – interstate and overseas – on holidays, or spreading thejoy of oral storytelling through her love of words and language. Storytelling andlecturing took her to many interesting venues, including Singapore, School-of-the Airand visits to prison! The experiences have been rewarding and many an unsuspectingtraveller has been the basis for a story.In 1998 she discovered the Writefree Women’s Writing Group at the KatharineSusannah Prichard Centre and has contributed to 26 anthologies put out by this group.She has had poems published and in 2008 launched her first book of short stories andpoems, Telling Tales and Weaving Dreams, and in 2018, she published her secondbook which includes a novella and other short stories, A Web Untangling.Brenda lived in Gooseberry Hill in Western Australia for 41 years and has recently downsized to a unit in Kalamunda.Email: [e-mail]