Donna has something to write home about

Donna Mazza's passion for writing started when her grandmother passed her book after book to read as a child.

She now has the role of Edith Cowan University South West arts program coordinator but Donna fondly remembers going to second-hand bookshops with her grandmother Jean Hainge.

"I read lots and lots of books, she was particularly influential because she supplied them," she said.

"She had a wide-range of interests and she didn't care what I bought from the second hand bookshop, so I used to go on my school holidays and leave with a bundle wrapped in newspaper, it was very exciting.

"I read stuff about the supernatural, which I shouldn't have been reading, I read a few classics but I've always been interested in a bit of science fiction."

Donna's love for writing led her down the path of studying at ECU South West after working at a few jobs following the completion of her high school studies.

"I was actually in the first intake of students that came to university here in 1986. They offered a very small selection of courses at the time but they had an arts degree majoring in English," she said.

Following the completion of her undergraduate studies, she decided to travel because she wanted to explore the world.

"I had a strong desire to go travelling because like many people who grow up in the country, I thought much more exciting things happened in other places," she said.

"I was really interested in the Eastern Bloc and it was near the end of the Cold War so I went through many of the countries and I wrote about some of my observations.

"I turned it into a story which became my first novel, called The Albanian, which was published many years later in 2007 and won the T.A.G Hungerford Award."

When she returned from her studies she worked as a vegetarian cook at Natural Temptation for four years.

"While I was there, the owner and I wrote a recipe book called First Temptation which sold lots of copies and is a nice product that lots of people in the South West recognise and that really inspired me to continue to write.

"From there, I went and did postgraduate study at ECU in Perth for a few years and that's when I focused on writing."

After completing her postgraduate studies, Donna took up a role as a casual lecturer before accepting the job as the arts program coordinator in 2008.

"I have a great passion for education in the South West because if there was not a university in the region then I would have not got the education that I did.

"The university gives people opportunities in their field that they would not have had otherwise and so I feel strongly that we should nurture the university down here and support it.

"I really love it when our students have great successes and they get articles published or they have things hanging on the wall at the Bunbury Regional Art Galleries and they feel really successful."

Donna said she enjoyed being able to combine her own writing with her role at the university.

"I've been teaching in a few areas that are a bit unusual to what ECU usually offers so I've been focusing on some areas in the science fiction genre that is not offered elsewhere," she said.

"I want to practice what I preach and take my imagination into whole new areas so I recently wrote a story that was published in The Westerly, which is about a woman who is having a Neanderthal baby as part of the de-extinction program."