Nerina Jones was raised in Melbourne’s outer east in the days of bushland, orchards, dairy farms and owner-built houses. She worked variously in shop sales, factory process work, as a housemaid in a motel and an aged care facility. She was a guest art teacher at primary and secondary level in rural Gippsland and a public servant, briefly in the 60s and later for 12 years with VicPol at the close of the millennium.
Nerina studied Arts at Monash, majoring in Visual Arts and later gained a Diploma of Visual Arts from GIAE (now Federation University). That was last century. Spanning the millennia, Nerina raised 2 generations of children over 55 years, most of them as a frazzled, sleep-starved sole parent and provider. In this century Nerina traded her paint brush for a pen and had a number of short stories and articles—some award-winning—appear in local Learning Centre publications and Positive Words magazine. She subsequently gained an MA in writing at Swinburne University and was employed as an online tutor of writing before gaining a PhD in 2019.
Floating is the first of Nerina’s long-form works offered for publication.