Amanda Mergler is a writer and feminist with a PhD in Education who was named one of Australia’s top thinkers in The Conversation’s 2017 Yearbook. As the co-founder of Girls’ Uniform Agenda, she campaigned to achieve the hard-won policy change across Australia giving girls in all state schools the right to wear shorts and pants to school. This experience altered her understanding of education and her sense of personal power and inspired Amanda to write a novel, Holding On and Letting Go (unpublished).
Amanda lives in Brisbane, on Turrbal land, with her husband who draws while she writes, two school-aged children who both wear shorts to school and one ginger cat who likes to lie across her keyboard. She is currently working on another novel that explores connection and alienation in mother-daughter relationships.