Mandy Sayer

Mandy Sayer (born 1963) is an Australian street performer-turned-writer (memoirist, novelist, poet, anthologist, reviewer, columnist).

She was born in 1963 in the Sydney suburb of Marrickville, the third of three children. Her parents separated when she was aged ten.[1] In 1983, she travelled to the United States with her father Gerry, a bohemian jazz performer.[1] They busked together on the streets of New York, New Orleans and Colorado for three years; Gerry played drums and Mandy tap danced.

In 1985 in New Orleans at Mardi Gras she met Yusef Komunyakaa, an African-American poet (later to win a Pulitzer Prize). They discovered a mutual interest in jazz and the novels of Patrick White.[2] That year they married, and he became a professor at Indiana University, where she studied for an MA in English and Creative Writing with his financial support.[2] They divorced in 1995, after the birth of his child from a one-night stand he had with a former girlfriend. During their marriage, Sayer miscarried one child to him and terminated another pregnancy against his wishes.[3] She writes about this in her 2014 The Poet's Wife.

On return to Australia, she gained a Doctorate from the University of Technology Sydney. In 2003, she married novelist and playwright Louis Nowra, becoming his third wife. They had worked together when they co-edited the anthology In the Gutter ... Looking at the Stars in 2000. They have separate homes not far from each other near Kings Cross, in which their daytime writing activities are conducted, and they come together in the evening.[2][4]

In February 2014, they were named joint holders of the 2014 Copyright Agency Non-Fiction Writer-in-Residence at the University of Technology.[5]