You're Doing it Wrong: A History of Bad & Bonkers Advice to Women

For more than 30 years, award-winning, best-selling author Kaz Cooke has been helping generations of girls and women with her practical, reassuring and fun guides to life stages.

Kaz began her career at The Age newspaper as a teenage reporter. It published her famous satirical etiquette column, ‘Keep Yourself Nice’, and her legendary cartoon strip ‘Hermoine the Modern Girl’, which also appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald. Readers have enjoyed her work in Dolly magazine, The Australian, The Canberra Times, the Australian Women’s Weekly, and the Cane Toad Times (RIP), and many are familiar with her from all sorts of commercial and community radio shows.

Kaz’s book Real Gorgeous was a blockbuster in the 1990s, tackling the high-pressure ideas of body and beauty on girls and women; her collection of columns ‘Living With Crazy Buttocks’ won the international prize for oddest title. The original Girl Stuff book scooped the pool for its first edition, winning Australian Book Industry general non-fiction book of the year and the Australian Bookseller’s Choice award.

Her other books include the meticulously researched, photo-illustrated book, You’re Doing It Wrong- A History of Bad & Bonkers Advice to Women; the historical novel based on real vaudevillians, Ada; and picture books for children, The Terrible Underpants and Wanda Linda Goes Berserk.

Up The Duff- The Real Guide to Pregnancy, Babies & Toddlers (formerly Kidwrangling), Girl Stuff 8-12 and Girl Stuff 13+ have been updated often and are regularly still on genre best-seller lists- trusted, word-of-mouth-classics bought and gifted between generations.

Kaz lives in Melbourne where she drinks tea, talks on the phone, and can’t find her keys.