Stephanie Dowrick

Stephanie Dowrick (born 2 June 1947) is an Australian writer, Interfaith Minister and social activist.

She is the author of more than 20 books of fiction and non-fiction, five of them best-sellers.

She was a publisher in Australia and the UK, where she co-founded The Women's Press, London.

Stephanie Dowrick was born in Wellington, New Zealand, on 2 June 1947.

Her mother, Estelle Mary Dowrick (née Brisco, daughter of 7th baronet Sir Hylton Musgrave Campbell Brisco), died in 1955.

As a child, Dowrick went to a number of primary schools, then to Sacred Heart College in Lower Hutt for her secondary education, leaving school at the age of 16.

Dowrick left New Zealand in 1967, lived for some months in Israel, then lived in Europe from 1967–1983, mainly in London, but also from 1970–71 in West Berlin.

She became a Roman Catholic at the age of nine after the death of her mother and her father's remarriage.

As an adult she was for many years a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).

Along with Virago publishers, founded by Australian Carmen Callil, The Women's Press was the largest feminist publisher in the English language during the key period of the second wave of the women's liberation movement, largely considered to have run from 1969 to the mid-1980s.

In 1977, Dowrick co-founded the independent feminist publishing house, The Women's Press, from her home in East London, which was financially backed by entrepreneur Naim Attallah.

The Women's Press was "a political press" explicitly linked with the Women's Movement.

Among the first books published by The Women's Press in 1978 were titles by Alice Munro (Lives of Girls and Women), Sylvia Townsend Warner (Lolly Willowes: or, The loving huntsman), and Michèle Roberts (A Piece of the Night).

The Women's Press published other influential 20th-century feminist writers, including Alice Walker, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning The Color Purple "transformed African-American literature", Janet Frame,

Andrea Dworkin, Lucy Goodison, Joanna Ryan, May Sarton, Susan Griffin and Lisa Alther.

She trained at the New Seminary, New York, an interfaith seminary founded in 1979 by Rabbi Joseph Gelberman.

Dowrick was the first winner of Women in Publishing's Pandora Award in 1981.

Since 1983, she has lived in Sydney with her family.

From 1983, writing became Dowrick's primary work.

Her books includes fiction and non-fiction for children and adults.

Dowrick's first novel, Running Backwards Over Sand (1985), was autobiographical in part with the book's protagonist Zoe Delightey's mother dying at an early age.

Dowrick was Chair of The Women's Press Board of Directors from 1989 to 1997.

She was later Chairperson of The Women's Press, before its amalgamation with Quartet Books.

Dowrick worked for Allen & Unwin, Sydney, from 1989 to 1992, as their founding part-time Fiction Publisher.

Dowrick had a small private psychotherapy practice for many years.

From 1995 to 2004, she was "On the Couch" presenter on ABC Radio National's Life Matters.

Since 2000, she has led retreats in New Zealand.

Dowrick has contributed to Australia's literary and media culture over many years.

She is a literary journalist and columnist for Fairfax Media on issues of ethics and social justice, feminism, spirituality, and refugees in Australia.

She has appeared as a regular guest on ABC Radio on a range of programmes including Life Matters, The Spirit of Things, All in the Mind, and Tony Delroy's NightLife.

She was ordained by the New Seminary, New York, where she graduated in 2005 (The New Seminary institution is not accredited or recognised by the U.S. Department of Education)

Dowrick was an editor and publisher at George G. Harrap and Co., London, the New English Library, and Triad Paperbacks.

In June 2005, Dowrick became one of Australia's first Interfaith Ministers.

In a review of Choosing Happiness (2006), The Age newspaper wrote: "Dowrick's gift is to bring the sacred into the mundane."

Since 2006, Dowrick has led an interfaith spiritually inclusive congregation in Sydney, Australia.

Dowrick was an Adjunct Fellow with the Writing and Society Research Group at Western Sydney University, where she graduated with a PhD degree in 2008.

Dowrick's more explicitly spiritual books include Seeking the Sacred (2010), and In the Company of Rilke, a scholarly spiritual study of the work of the European poet, Rainer Maria Rilke.

Dowrick has been described as a "pioneering individual" in interfaith, post-denominational spirituality.

Her spiritual journey has included Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity, and her influences include Ven Thich Nhat Hanh, Dom Bede Griffiths, Thomas Merton, and Irish poet John O'Donohue.

Everyday Kindness (2011) was described in The Sydney Morning Herald as "the practical expression of her spiritual ethic."