Passionate about the power of stories, Hayley quit teaching law to study acting, performed locally and wrote and produced Pressure Point, a play about asylum seekers. After the 2002 fires, Hayley moved to her girlfriend’s cattle farm. Here, apart from learning how to fight fires, work cattle and shovel manure, she wrote short stories and essays and completed an MFA (Creative Writing). Since the 2019 bushfires, which struck while Hayley was undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer, she has facilitated communications, creative recovery and social cohesion projects for her bushfire-affected community, and worked as a co-designer on the Fire to Flourish program in the Clarence Valley. Her writing has won competitions, been read on ABC radio and Queerstories and been published in Australian and international journals including Australian Book Review, Griffith Review, Southerly, Fourth Genre and Kenyon Review. Untethered, her debut memoir, was published in 2020.