AUTHOR BIO Anita Horan was raised by a lake in NSW in a highly religious, tight knit community. She moved to Tasmania to become a missionary with her family, and was engaged to be married. Everything fell apart and Anita spent years trying to stitch her life back together. She discusses topics often avoided, like sensitivity versus aggression, adult bullying in social environments, the pain of losing faith and fear of mortality. She is a great Italian storyteller and very funny, so lifts the intensity of her themes with lighthearted stories. She is married with two teenage children and has three autobiographical published books that are all entwined. Anita has started a new podcast called ‘Two Authors Talk.’ QUICK INTERVIEW Where are you from? “Outer Sydney, Australia” When did you first realize you wanted to be an author? “I started writing adventure stories when I was young, but never finished them. I loved writing lengthy letters to my family, then I started submitting letters to newspapers and magazines, everything I submitted was published. I wrote biographies for a community magazine for a couple of years and received positive feedback. But it was unpaid and taking up a lot of my time, so I started writing my own books. I loved the freedom of talking about whatever I wanted.” What is your favorite genre to read/write? “I love reading memoir mostly as finding out about other people’s lives, helps me to understand myself. I also like to read well written mysteries. For my own writing, I enjoy interviewing and writing biographies about other people and including them in my own memoirs.” What is the most difficult part about writing for you? “Focusing and the seeming endless editing.” Who/What inspired The Is This Me? Trilogy? “I went through some terrible stress with losing my faith and adult female bullying. I felt that no one knew my side of the story, or my silent suffering, and I wanted to give victims of these issues a voice. I also went through a stage of reading boring books and thought books had to be dull