Louise M Hewett was born in Camden, New South Wales, in 1966. Her first poem, written at the age of eleven but now lost, was about her front teeth which had been damaged in a bicycle accident at the age of nine. Given encouragement by her family she kept writing poems, and was soon indulging her imagination in short stories. At the age of fourteen she wrote her first long story, 400 pages, on an old typewriter. 'Drinking from The Birch Bowl' is a...