12 Facts About Dymphna Cusack

Ellen Dymphna Cusack AM was an Australian writer and playwright.

Dymphna Cusack worked as a teacher until she retired in 1944 for health reasons.

Dymphna Cusack's illness was confirmed in 1978 as multiple sclerosis.

Dymphna Cusack died at Manly, New South Wales on 19 October 1981.

Dymphna Cusack wrote twelve novels, eleven plays, three travel books, two children's books and one non-fiction book.

The biography Caddie, the Story of a Barmaid, to which Dymphna Cusack wrote an introduction and helped the author write, was produced as the film Caddie in 1976.

Dymphna Cusack's younger brother, John, was an author, writing the war novel They Hosed Them Out under the pseudonym John Beede, which was first published in 1965; an expanded edition under the author's real name, John Bede Cusack, was published in 2012 by Wakefield Press, edited and annotated by Robert Brokenmouth.

Dymphna Cusack advocated social reform and described the need for reform in her writings.

Dymphna Cusack contributed to the world peace movement during the Cold War era as an antinuclear activist.

Dymphna Cusack was a foundation member of the Australian Society of Authors in 1963.

Dymphna Cusack had refused an Order of the British Empire, but was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1981 for her contribution to Australian literature.

In 2011, Dymphna Cusack was one of 11 authors, including Elizabeth Jolley and Manning Clark, to be permanently recognised by the addition of brass plaques at the Writers' Walk, Sydney.