Paper Chase

I never knew my grandmother, Mary Ellen Kerr Peach. Then some old letters came into my possession; my paper chase began. I learnt how she epitomised the young, educated women of a century ago who sought to shatter the shibboleths of sexism by persistence and conviction. She wanted to teach, and thus guide girls and boys equally towards worthwhile adulthood. She died too young but in the time available to her I hope she was content to have made her mark, if not any headlines. I feel certain we all have a Mary Ellen in our family histories; it just needed, in my case, a little shoebox to set me on the trail. Maureen Mitson was born in Kendal in England and moved with her family to Adelaide in 1954. After marriage she travelled, to live over the next fifteen years in the UK, Singapore, Cyprus, Malta. With her husband Fred, and two children, she returned to Adelaide in 1977. She celebrated the completion of her own academic education on her fiftieth birthday with a degree in Communication and Literary Studies. As a member of the Tea Tree Gully Library and the North East Writers' groups, she has won prizes for her short stories and poetry at the Salisbury Writers' Festival and had stories read over the air by Adelaide Radio and by the Queensland Story Teller. Also a member of Friendly Street, and Gawler Poets, she has been fortunate to win prizes for her poetry and has featured in anthologies and also in Ginninderra Press's The Heart of Port Adelaide and Mindfields. Paper Chase is her first published novella.