About Me

Lenora Thaker is a proud Torres Strait Islander woman (home Islands: Erub and Mabuiag), born and living on Yidinji country in far north Queensland. She is a descendant of the Torres Strait Islanders of Malaytown (a makeshift village cobbled around Cairns swampland, late 1800s to early 1950s), who are the inspiration for her first novel. 

For many years Lenora was a tireless advocate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families and in the early 2000s her community advocacy, industry knowledge and writing skills lead her into Indigenous studies curriculum development and later Indigenous Leadership learning and development.

But Lenora’s secret passion was to write creatively and one day become a published historical fiction writer, believing in the words of Toni Morrison: If you cannot find the book you want to read, you must write it.

In 2021 her years of playing in her own ‘creative writing sandbox’ were rewarded when she entered a manuscript and became the first Torres Strait Islander to win the Writing NSW Boundless Indigenous Writer’s Mentorship. Lenora’s journey to publication has set sail on a publishing deal with Text Publishing and she looks forward to launching her first novel by 2024.