Celebrating graduate Marion Taffe: The incredible publishing journey of a journalist-turned-novelist

Looking for a change after a 20-year career as a press journalist, RMIT graduate Marion is now having the ANZ rights to her historical novel Freda acquired by major international publishing house HarperCollins.

The theatre is dim, the crowd is holding their breath, and the stage shimmers underneath the spotlights as the Student of the Year for the College of Vocational Education’s Creative Industries cluster is announced: graduate and soon-to-be-published novelist Marion Taffe.

Marion is being celebrated for her achievements throughout her time studying the Associate Degree in Professional Writing and Editing, including having her historical novel Freda acquired by major international publishing house HarperCollins.

“In my late 20s, I was reading Rose Tremain’s Music & Silence and I thought, in my next life, I want to be able to write like this,” said Marion, a beacon emanating warmth and excitement.

“Finally, five years ago, I opened my laptop and began. There is only one life – and only one Rose Tremain. I have my own voice.”

With a 20-year career as a press journalist, Marion was searching for a new direction with her writing after starting a family. The Professional Writing and Editing (PWE) course at RMIT seemed the perfect fit to help her make that change. While she had attempted a Bachelor of Arts in the early 1990s, she had never finished it due to being offered a job at a newspaper.

“Too much time had passed for me to go back and finish my BA, and I didn’t want to start another full Bachelor,” said Marion. “Then I found out about PWE and it seemed as though someone had a designed a course just for me.”

RMIT graduate Marion Taffe.

Marion especially loved the great organic community around the course, as well as the immensely supportive teaching staff.

“The teachers foster connection and workshopping. There’re a lot of successful alumni and they would come and talk to us,” explained Marion.

“It felt right. I think I did a half-hearted effort at Googling other options but there really wasn’t any other course that suited me so well.”

Marion’s publishing contract is also a direct result of her incredible work while studying at RMIT – she had workshopped fragments of her novel in class, and she had met her publisher through the Towards Publication unit managed by literary agent Danielle Binks.

“When I met my publisher Catherine Milne, the Head of Fiction at HarperCollins, and she fell in love with my story, it didn’t seem real. She can really see into the heart of a story and it’s such a privilege to work with her,” said Marion. “I absolutely wouldn’t be here now without PWE.”

Marion’s historical fiction novel is set in the Tenth Century in the Kingdom of Mercia, which we know now as the English Midlands. A farm girl, the titular Freda, survives a Viking raid and is taken to an abbey where she learns to write. Freda is drawn into the orbit of the Mercian leader Lady Æthelflæd, who shows her what it is like to lead as a woman in a world that worships warrior kings. Soon Freda has to choose – does she remain the powerless, subservient quill whose fate lies in the hands of another, or does she fight for the right to create her own story?

“Contracts and awards and publication are all nice,” said Marion. “But really, the joy for me is in the writing – the creating and the craft.”

When asked what’s next for her now that she has completed her degree and her novel is undergoing edits before publication, Marion mysteriously hints at working on her second novel – also historical, but quite different and set in Australia.

“My big hope for the next couple of years is that people enjoy my novel, that it challenges them, and opens their mind to a period in history that is still influencing our world today.”

Story by: Wen Yee Ang

08 December 2023

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Celebrating graduate Marion Taffe: The incredible publishing journey of a journalist-turned-novelist