Christina Alexander Biography

Christina Alexander was born in the bitterly cold sheep and lake country of the far south of New Zealand, and trained as a teacher in Dunedin. She taught infants in the area before moving to Australia and studying journalism, English, psychology, and remedial education at the University of Queensland in Brisbane.

Christina then resumed teaching at secondary and tertiary levels, but resigned to tackle writing and research. Over almost two decades she developed and published multi sensory teaching materials illustrated by Armin Greder and Ian Ottley with calligraphers Katie Blackwell and Alan Mc Carroll. These Banana Books and kits are published by Turkey Tracks Press; they are used globally by gifted and talented mainstream speech/hearing/sight-impaired people. The series is designed for home use, and caters for college/school and dyslectic populations above the ages of four.

Subsequently Christina co-founded the Brisbane Dyslexia Association and was seminar leader for numerous dyslexia community awareness seminars with Apex, Lions International, the church, Toastmaster, Rotary and Junior Chamber of Commerce groups, and others in both metropolitan and remote areas.

She has appeared on Channels 7, 9, 10 and the ABC, as well as radio. Her work has also been reviewed in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, the Courier Mail, New Idea and Woman’s Day.

Influences that Christina feels are important include: Maria Montessori, Grace Maxwell Fernald, Ruth Rendell, Margaret Attwood, Charlie Chaplin, Edward Lear, Dr Seuss, Patti Miller, The Sitwells, Clive James, and Samuel Johnson.

Her more recent fiction has been published in Memories of the 20th Century by Arrow Publications. ‘The Peacock Reunion’, appeared in The Western Australia Victoria Park Journal, and was shortlisted The Todhunter Literary Awards (now collected in The Laughing Willows Stories). ‘Tree Ladies: 8 metaphors for early feminist rural women’, shortlisted for the Glen Eira Literary Award (also in The Laughing Willows Stories).

Forthcoming work includes Keeping the Cat in the cage, a memoir chronicling the challenges and injustices encountered in researching and developing the Banana Books series. The memoir was prompted by Christina’s experience of generational dyslexia and Education departments’ lackadaisical ineptitude in dealing with so-called ‘low literacy’ – which affects as many as 2.6 million Australians today.

Christina won the 2007 Horror Writers of Australia Short Story Contest with incised plaque and publication in Dark Animus quarterly.

Mrs Dooley's Fun Bun is a work in progress in the thriller genre with elements of crime, horror and poetic justice.