Sally Colin-James’s love of character came long before her love of writing. The eldest of a large family from a regional South Australian seaport town, Sally grew up around sparkies and wharfies, miners and one-eyed football supporters, and hard-working Italian and Greek migrants. Vibrant women and men who could intimidate with their fervour or warm your heart with their sincerity. Full-colour characters who continue to inspire and influence her work.

After being told by her school principal she should forge a career in pharmacy or economics and forget her dream of journalism, Sally found herself slumped in the plastic chairs of Adelaide University hoping that Statistics 1AC would help her calculate the likelihood of finding any joy in the situation.

Longing for creative expression and unable to transfer into journalism, she shifted gear and completed a degree in communications. Then travelled to London where work highlights included a role coordinating events for recording giants EMI and Sony. The pinnacle of which was co-organising the launch of ‘The Beatles Live at the BBC’, the first album released by The Beatles since the death of John Lennon.

However, one of her most treasured experiences was her time with the late Ernst Gombrich, a lauded professor of Art History. Her role as personal cook for him and his wife, and escorting him on walk-and-talks around his West Hampstead neighbourhood, constitute an all-too-brief highlight of her London life. Ernst’s insightful pragmatism, even more than his brilliance in art history, enthralled and buoyed her. It was his uncomplicated attitude towards art and his endless curiosity towards life that she — still — returns to for inspiration.

As a parting gift, Ernst gifted Sally a first edition copy of his acclaimed The Story of Art. Inside it, a handwritten dedication:

For Sally
Who makes our lunches
Puts flowers in bunches
And takes me for walks
With agreeable talks.
Ernst

Along with other gifts and luggage, Ernst's book was lost in the transit back to Australia.

In her writer’s mind, she imagines it — one day, somewhere — falling from a dusty antique bookshop shelf and landing at her feet.

After critical illness and an aeroplane accident pushed life sideways, Sally was driven by a deep-rooted need to understand trauma and its implications and complications. When she stood before Albertinelli’s painting, The Visitation, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, she felt the profound presence of an intersection between trauma, art and literature that she would — one day — put into words.

One Illumined Thread is that work.

Sally’s commitment to writing stems from a burning desire to craft voices that speak deeply and personally to the reader. Stories where the reader might see themselves on the page and feel that their silent stories, too, have somehow been heard.

She writes from her rainforest home where she is building an open air butterfly sanctuary for the threatened Richmond birdwing.