Beyond Alice

‘Nearly half a century ago, I read Ethel Turner’s Seven Little Australians and this was the last time I recall feeling such a strong connection between narrator and story. Tanya’s writing is just bloody joyful, interlaced with discovery and resilience.’ Fiona O’Loughlin, bestselling author of Truths from an Unreliable Witness‘A tender, raw and beautiful coming-of-age adventure, that forces Tanya to pivot between the vast freedom of desert life, to the rigid expectations of city boarding school. From start to finish Beyond Alice is beguiling!’ Renee McBryde, bestselling author of The House of Lies

Raised on an isolated cattle station north of Alice Springs during the 1960s and 70s, Tanya learnt about the outside world through the Correspondence School and School of the Air. She spent many hours dreaming of the overseas lands depicted in her childhood storybooks.

When she was twelve years old, she was sent sixteen hundred kilometres away from her outback home to a boarding school, a traumatic and life changing experience. From there, she became a lawyer. She never stopped dreaming, however, which led her to the Czech Republic to teach English in 1994, four years after the Berlin Wall fell.

Tanya has published Alice to Prague (2019), An Alice Girl (2020), and Beyond Alice (2021) is her third memoir.

Tanya still works in law and lives back in Alice Springs with her husband. Tanya is President of the NT Writer’s Centre.