Dorothy Hewett

Dorothy Coade Hewett (21 May 1923 – 25 August 2002) was an Australian feminist poet, novelist and playwright. She has been called "one of Australia's best-loved and most respected writers". She was also a member of the Communist Party for a period, though she clashed on many occasions with the party leadership.

Hewett was born in Perth, Western Australia and was brought up on a sheep and wheat farm near Wickepin in the Western Australian Wheatbelt. She was initially educated at home and through correspondence courses. From the age of 15 she attended Perth College, which was run by Anglican nuns. Hewett was an atheist, remaining so all her life.

In 1944 Hewett began studying English at the University of Western Australia (UWA). It was here that she joined the Communist Party(CP) in 1946 and began writing most of The Workers Star, the WA Communist newspaper, under assumed names. Also during her time at UWA she won a major drama competition and a national poetry competition.

In 1944 she married communist lawyer Lloyd Davies and had a son who died of leukaemia at age three. The marriage ended in divorce in 1948, following Hewett's departure to Sydney to live with Les Flood, a boilermaker, with whom she had three sons over five years. During this period Hewett wrote mostly journalism under pseudonyms for the Communist paper, The Tribune (the Menzies government had made it illegal), however the time she spent working in a clothing factory and volunteering for the CP did inform many of her later works.

Following the end of this relationship in 1958 Hewett returned to Perth to take up a teaching post in the English department at UWA. This move also inspired her to begin writing again. Jeannie (1958) was the first piece she completed following her enforced hiatus; Hewett later admitted to finding this a rejuvenating experience.

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