Josepha Dietrich in conversation

We begin with Josepha Dietrich whose memoir In Danger was published by UQP earlier this year. By way of introduction I’m going to take the unusual step of reading the author note from the front of her book as a way of describing her because, honestly, I can’t think of a better description: Josie Dietrich is an English immigrant to Australia. She lives in Brisbane in the home she and her partner built on passive house principles. After coming out of a long reign as a carer, she’s worked as a research assisant for universities on projects to improve psychiatric discharge planning and women’s wellness after cancer. Her prior long-term work was in the After Hours Child Protection Unit, assessing children’s risk of harm alongside the Sexual Offences and Child Abuse Unit of Victoria Police. To remain sane during this period, she flitted off overseas for months at a time to climb cliff faces while sleeping on beaches or in abandoned shepherd’s huts. After her cancer treatments finished and in light of her experience caring for her dying mother, Josie joined the advisory committee of CanSpeak Queensland as a cancer and consumer advocate. This memoir, In Danger, is about her own journey through a diagnosis of breast cancer, following on from the death of her mother from the same disease fourteen years previously. It is not by any means a grim book, in fact it’s quite the opposite, probably, or possibly because of Josie’s familiarity with the illness and her lack of sentimentality towards it.