1939 - present

'My first memory of life in Bondi Junction was Cracker Night,’ Diane recalls. `A bonfire was blazing in our little back street and I watched shyly as the kids and their parents were letting of fireworks. Everyone was having great fun and as I stood there, a girl came over and handed me a sparkler. After the tension and terror I had lived in, seeing adults and children sharing such light-hearted fun was a revelation. That experience symbolised for me the contrast between my wonderful new life and the dark past. It inspired me to write my novel EMPIRE DAY, which is actually a tribute to our kind Australian neighbours.’

'When my parents became Australian citizens, my father wrote a letter to the then Minister for Immigration, Harold Holt, to thank him for the privilege of becoming an Australian.’

Diane was living in Bondi Junction when, at the age of 12, she wrote her first story and sent it to the Australian Women’s Weekly. That story was rejected but thirteen years later, when she sent them a story based on her experiences teaching at a Blackboard Jungle school in London, they published it.

Since then, she has written over 3000 articles in national and international newspapers and magazines. Her prizes for journalism include the Pluma de Plata which the Mexican government awarded for the best article written about Mexico world-wide, and the George Munster Award for Independent Journalism.

Her first book, MOSAIC, a Chronicle of Five Generations, was a family memoir which was shortlisted for the National Biography Award. THE VOYAGE OF THEIR LIFE, her account of her nightmare journey to Australia, was short-listed for the NSW Premier’s award for Non-Fiction. WINTER JOURNEY, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Literary Awards. NOCTURNE won the Society of Women Writers’ Fiction Award, and was nominated in Poland for the best novel written outside Poland about the Warsaw Uprising. THE COLLABORATOR, has been published in the United States and the United Kingdom.

DANCING WITH THE ENEMY, was published in 2022.

Diane lives in Sydney. Her children and grandchildren live in Bondi, so that connection continues.

Courtesy Diane Armstrong and Eat, Pray, Naches.