Amy Witting

Amy Witting (26 January 1918 – 18 September 2001) was the pen name of Australian novelist and poet Joan Austral Fraser, born Joan Austral Fraser. She has been described as one of Australia's "finest fiction writers, whose work was full of the atmosphere and colour of times past".

Life Amy Witting was born Joan Austral Fraser in the Sydney suburb of Annandale and was raised Catholic. She had "melancholy memories of a repressive family life" and remembered the nuns at her school, St Brendan's College, as being "obsessed with the torments of hell". She suffered from tuberculosis as a child.

She attended Fort Street Girls' High School. She studied languages at the University of Sydney, where she met figures including James McAuley, Harold Stewart, and Dorothy Auchterlonie Green. Subsequently, she earned a Diploma of Education at Teachers College and became a school teacher. Tuberculosis recurred in her early adulthood, leading to time spent in a sanatorium which "gave her, for a time, the peace and solitude she always craved".