Australian writer, author of the runaway best-selling first book “Come In Spinner,” 1951, a wrenching portrait of prostitution and gambling, rackets and black marketing and the whole sleazy sub-culture of vice that flourished side by side with patriotic dedication to the war effort.
It was published in Britain, the USA, and was translated into many European languages. “Say No To Death,” followed in the same year, an elegiac, deeply moving story of a young woman stricken by tuberculosis, a searing indictment of the treatment and care of T.B. victims and was instrumental in influencing New South Wales public health authorities to introduce new standards in treatment and prevention.
The daughter of a sheep farmer, Dymphna was educated at St Ursula’s College, Armidale, and graduated from Sydney University with an Honours Degree in Arts and a Diploma of Education. She worked as a teacher until her early retirement in 1944 due to ill-health.
Her position in Australian literature has been established since 1935 with her first three-act drama, “Red Sky at Morning,” heralded as the best play yet written in Australia, and her first novel, “Jungfrau,” 1936, runner-up for the Prior Prize in the same year.
Dymphna Cusack left Australia to begin a new life. With her husband Norman Frechill she spent twenty years traveling through Europe and Asia. East or West, the Riviera or the Perfumed Hills of China, writing continuously of the different cultures and common problems of humanity.
Cusack was awarded the Australia Medal in 1981 for her contribution to Australian literature. She died on 10/19/1981, Sydney, NSW, Australia. Her biography, “Dymphna,” 1975, was written by her husband, Norman Freehill.
Link to Wikipedia biography