Susan Varga

Susan Varga is an Australian writer and philanthropist who was born in Hungary in 1943. Biography Susan Varga is one of the "most accomplished of Australia's second-generation, post-Holocaust autobiographers". Anne Coombs died 23 December 2021.

Varga has written fiction, non-fiction and articles for newspapers and magazines.

Education Varga obtained a MA from the University of Sydney and later a law degree from the University of New South Wales.

Together with Anne Coombs and Helen McCue, Varga founded Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) in 2001. In 2020 there are branches across Australia supporting and advocating for refugees and people seeking asylum.

Activism In 1974 Varga was one of a group of volunteers including Kay Ferrington, Joan Killorn, Betty Pybus and Edith Warburton who set up the Bonnie Women's Refuge at 260 Burns Road, Bonnyrigg in Sydney's South West. Nola Cooper, Christine Sykes and Diane Powell also played a crucial role. It was called Bonny's in line with the practice of naming women's refuges after women. The first women's refuge in New South Wales was called Elsie Refuge.

Bonnie Support Services was launched in 2014 on the 40th anniversary of the setting up of the Bonnie Women's Refuge. Varga wrote a poem, "Refuge", for the occasion. It concludes with the words, "By Women, For Women". Hard Joy, Upswell Publishing, 2022

Journal articles and reviews

Varga Susan. Twice the man, Sydney Morning Herald 9 August 2003 Susan Varga. Fiction or Non Fiction? The Writer's Response to History; Address to the Sydney Institute, 1995 Susan Varga, Opting Out, Griffith Review, 2007

Awards Heddy and Me won the Fellowship of Australian Writers Christina Stead Award for biography in 1994, It has been translated into German and Hungarian.

Headlong was shortlisted for the 2010 Barbara Jefferis Award.

Rupture, poetry, was commended in the 2016 Anne Elder Award.