About

Melanie Duckworth

I live in Halden, a small Norwegian town close to Sweden, with my husband, our small son, our baby girl, and two black cats. Halden has everything that a small town should: a river, a harbour, a sixteenth century fortress, lakes, deer, wolves, pine forests, and a nuclear reactor.

I am an Associate Professor of English Literature at a local University College. I come from Adelaide. I have a Masters in Medieval English Literatures from the University of York, and a PhD in Australian medievalism from the University of Leeds.

This blog charts the final years of my PhD; my years of acclimatising to living in Norway, which included working in a daycare centre and casual teaching contracts at two universities; our travels in Europe, Australia and the USA; paragliding; poems, and the love and grief of my early years of motherhood. These days it’s mainly a chronicle of my children’s lives, but everything else comes into it now and then. When it comes down to it, I write because I love to write, I need to.