Chloe Higgins is someone often remembered for her work organising the Wollongong Writer's Festival or the various writing workshops she teaches.
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But Higgins is soon to be known on a national and possibly international level with her first book set for release.
The 31-year-old has recently submitted her final manuscript to her copy editor at Picador Australia, though explained the process of writing has been long and is far from over.
I stopped writing what I thought I should write and I started putting my liver on the page. It is so incredibly terrifying to release this book into the world.
- Chloe Higgins
Her memoir, The Girls, began more than a decade ago when Higgins found herself in a psychiatric ward. She had been "spiraling out of control" after a tragic car accident took the lives of her younger sisters in 2005 - then aged nine and 14.
It was in hospital she started to channel her inner grief onto paper as a way to deal with the trauma and loss.
"That for me was kind of a lead in to develop a love for writing which is the thing ... pulling me through processing the grief," Higgins said.
"There was this beautiful sense of spaciousness while I was in the ward. In many ways it was a really positive experience for me ... almost escapism from the reality of what had happened."
For several years she tried to write her story on her own, spending bouts of time filling pages in exotic locations like India, but she was struggling. She then tried fiction writing but eventually returned to the memoir genre.
In 2011 Higgins began studying at the University of Wollongong when her life started to change.
"You spend years collecting rejection slips," she said.
"I stopped writing what I thought I should write and I started putting my liver on the page.
"It is so incredibly terrifying to release this book into the world."
Initial copy of The Girls has since earned her two writer-in-residence programs along with awards. It also landed her an agent and subsequent signing to a publishing house in 2018.
"It was just strange that I had not had any publication success," Higgins said
"Then I just sent out this first chapter and [won awards] and had agents in New York potentially interested and had publishers and agents in Australia asking to see more as well."
Higgins was thrilled two other emerging authors from the region were also signed at the same time (Julie Keys and Helena Fox) - all within a month of each other.
"Its been actually one of the most beautiful things to go through that overwhelm and anxiety of all these new experiences," she said.
"Navigating signing with agents, then publishers, and talking about publicity and domestic versus foreign rights.
"To be able to go through it with them is amazing."
The Girls will still need to be edited and work-shopped until it hits the printing press in July, ready for book store shelves in September.
All the while Higgins is still working on putting the Wollongong Writers Festival together for November and completing her 40,000 word thesis for her PhD in Creative Arts - delving into the "neuro physiology of grief in literature".
The Girls will be released through Picador in September this year.