These women of Maltese origin will undeniably leave a mark on the increasing body of literature which in many cases owes its origin to influences first experienced in Malta.

In other instances, the Maltese connection is more tenuous, a feature one expects to become more and more evident with subsequent generations of Maltese-Australian writers.

Anne Parnis

Anne Parnis was born in Sliema and was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart.

She has had a colourful life, having lived much of her early married life with her husband, Roger, in Nigeria. In 1978, they migrated first to South Australia and then to New South Wales, following which they spent two years in Papua New Guinea and then settled in Adelaide in the late 1980s.

Together with her sister Helen, she first published their book Recipes from Malta, which was later followed by The Food and Cookery of Malta. Both these books were written under their maiden surname of Caruana Galizia.

Lana Penrose

Lana Penrose was born and raised in Sydney. Her mother hails from Sliema and she has relatives living in St Julian’s. Her father is Australian.

She has worked as a record company promotions manager, music journalist and music television producer, has written for two music publications in Melbourne and spent time in London working for Arista Records and later Sony Music UK. On returning to Australia in the mid-1990s she became a scriptwriter and producer of MTV News.

Ms Penrose has appeared on several national breakfast television and radio shows and been featured in several newspaper articles. She has also voiced a children’s animation called Aunty Marulan and the Magic Soap, coincidentally produced by a fellow Maltese-Australian.

In 2000 she moved to Greece with her Greek-Australian partner, which provided material for To Hellas and Back (Penguin, 2007). It reached No. 2 on the Bookscan Top 10, and became a bestseller in Australia, was translated into Slovak and optioned to be made into a film.

The memoir is set in Greece where Ms Penrose lived for four years, but Malta features in a prominent chapter to highlight her own culture shock in settling in a place with which she had no cultural ties, while her Greek-Australian partner integrated effortlessly into Athenian culture.

One of the book’s major premises is the connectivity to your ancestry.

Her second memoir, Kickstart My Heart, is equally contemporary, insightful and light-hearted. Set in London, it recounts the experiences of a freshly single woman and is full of pop culture references.

A double CD soundtrack was compiled by Universal Music Australia, “the first mainstream book soundtrack of its kind”, which allows one to enjoy listening to retro hits while reading Ms Penrose’s story.

The author is now finalising her third and final memoir, which she describes as “an amusing quest for sanity during dark times”.

She is also making her first foray into fiction by way of a young adult novel, Angelique Andronicus and the Shoreditch Swirls – a work of pure fantasy.

She plans to continue cultivating her career as a full-time writer, expanding her work into other territories. She looks forward to revisiting Malta for the sixth time.

See www.dymocks.com.au and www.facebook.com/lana.penrose.

Dolores Bellemo

Dolores Bellemo was born in Ħamrun and lived in Paola until she was seven when the family left for Australia in January 1953.

She was educated at Vaucluse Catholic College in Melbourne. She graduated Bachelor of Arts from Swinburne University of Victoria and then obtained a Graduate Diploma of Education. After years as a teacher of Media Studies and Italian, she left teaching to concentrate on her passion, writing.

Ms Bellemo has written a memoir, Crazy for Italy, as well as articles on travel and social/political issues. Her work has been published in various newspapers and magazines.

Her play Shelter made it to the finals in the Crash Test Drama contest held in Melbourne in 2010 and was later performed by Gemco Theatre Co and published in a book of one-act plays, Little Gems.

She has visited Italy numerous times with her Italian husband and says her fascination for the country and its people increases every time she visits.

This has led to her latest publication, Crazy for Italy, which she described as “a delightful memoir of Italy, its cultural charms, and its people with all of their peculiarities and eccentricities, but above all their generosity”. It consists of vivid sketches of scenes and characters, which distinguishes it from the ordinary travelogue.

The sketches by her artist husband give the book a special flavour.

Lou Drofenik

Lou Drofenik (née Zammit), another Maltese-Australian woman author who Dr Cauchi had written about in his feature in The SundayTimes of September 11, has won first prize in the Novel Written in Another Language category in the Premju Nazzjonali tal-Ktieb, awarded earlier this month, for her novel Cast the Long Shadow.