Marilla North

Marilla North (also Marilla Wilson and Marilla Eidlitz) (born 14 September 1945) is a biographer and cultural historian, working in Australian women’s literary history. Her teaching career has spanned over 50 years in public education at primary, secondary and tertiary levels, where she has specialised in Life Writing.

North has been Director/CEO of several agencies in government and the private sector. She was employed for 20 years in the communications sector in marketing and issues management. She is the author of the prize-winning narrative-biographical work, Yarn Spinners (2001, 2017), and she has published articles, chapters, papers and biographical entries on the writers Dymphna Cusack, Miles Franklin, Florence James, Cusack's partner Norman Freehill, and other Australian personalities of the mid to late 20th Century.

Early life
North was born in Newcastle, New South Wales in 1945. The Norths were coal miners from Shropshire and Nottinghamshire in England who emigrated to Greta in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. Her grandfather Albert North was partner in the Cwmdu Colliery, Maitland, New South Wales. He died of injuries following an explosion in the mine in 1937.

Her father Mark North (1918–74) became the Chief Design Engineer with the steel manufacturer Lysaght, and was credited with 18 patents in grain silos and multi-storey steel building construction.

In 1963 North enrolled in Arts in Newcastle University, and was active in the Newcastle University Drama Society, taking leading roles in revues and experimental theatre. At Australian Universities Drama Festivals, she shared the stage with luminaries such as Germaine Greer, Albie Thoms and Fernando Arrabel.

At the age of 19, North married her classmate Kent Wilson. Their daughter Natalie was born in December 1965, just after North completed her final university exams. Six weeks later she began teaching in primary and later secondary schools in New South Wales, including remedial teaching. She and Wilson separated in 1970. He later became a financial analyst, retiring as Managing Director of Credit Suisse First Boston Australia in 2004. North joined the Commonwealth Department of Education in Canberra in 1972 in the Private Overseas Student Program and then in curriculum development at Canberra Technical College. As Marilla Wilson, she was mentored by poets A.D. Hope and Bob Brissenden and her poetry was regularly published in the Canberra Times during 1973. Her book of poetry Blue Glass and Turtle Eggs was published in 1975.

At an art opening in early 1974, North met the winner of the first Churchill Award, Ferencz Eidlitz (1923–1997). Eidlitz was a Hungarian graphic designer of the Bauhaus school who had regular showings throughout Australia, in New York and Europe. With Eidlitz, she exhibited an experimental design of her poetry in Canberra Theatre. She took a cadetship with Insight Advertising in Sydney, and married Eidlitz in 1975. When Insight was taken over, she became a co-director of Eidlitz Research Design Associates.

Career in market research 1975–80
From 1975 to 1980, North worked as a consultant in education and training. As Marilla Eidlitz she:


 * enrolled at Macquarie University in media studies and education, and did study placements with Sesame Street in the USA. She developed a Public Education Resources Kit with John P Murray at Macquarie University to educate and involve parents in Children’s Television issues, including violence, advertising and content regulations and programming standards.
 * designed joint research studies with ABC-TV Children’s Programming in communications objectives and audience reception, and tested in pre- and post-production.


 * developed and taught techniques for communications testing in developing programming and production for film and television students at the newly established Australian Film, Television and Radio School.


 * conducted a National Study of Employment and Training Needs in the Australian Film and TV Industries. At this time, she first interviewed the writers Dymphna Cusack and Florence James, aiming to make a documentary of their collaboration on the wartime best-seller Come in Spinner. For the South Australian government, she also surveyed employment and training needs in the film and TV Industry and in the tertiary education sector.

She prepared design briefs with Eidlitz for corporate branding of private and government clients. With Eidlitz she travelled to New York and South America, and moved among important figures of the arts in Australia, New York and Europe.

North separated from Eidlitz after she joined the public relations firm Eric White Associates in 1979. As manager of their Education and Health Division, she worked on Issues Management strategies with major firms including Amatil, Unilever, Roche and Ciba-Geigy. She helped organise the National Ralph Nader Tour of Australia, and designed and conducted the UNICEF/International Year of the Child Australian national education and fundraising campaign.

Career in management, NSW Government, 1980–90
From 1980–82 she was NSW Director of the State Secretariat for the International Year of Disabled Persons, where she developed and ran an 18 month state-wide public education programme designed to change attitudes, behaviours and policies towards people with handicaps or disabilities using radio, TV, feature film and on-the-ground community projects. She established and edited Aware, a monthly newsletter to the disability reform network.

In 1982 she was appointed as head of the Information Services Division of the NSW Department of Youth and Community Services, and was editor-in chief of publications. She initiated government media campaigns on social justice issues, including the controversial Child Abuse campaign.

From 1983–86 North headed the Information Services Division in the NSW Department of TAFE, producing the annual NSW Course Handbook. She developed materials for EORA Aboriginal Education Centre's programmes, and supported an anti-Bicentennial protest. She received a scholarship for a three-month residential course at the Australian Graduate School of Management as one of only two women in the class of 1986.

From 1987–1990, she was seconded to the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, working with philanthropist Ken Tribe to establish a Foundation for scholarships and mentoring of students. She created a secretariat, an alumni database and the newsletter Con Viva, and organised a fundraising committee chaired by Margaret Whitlam AM. The Committee arranged concerts, recitals and masterclasses often co-produced with ABC Radio, and held marathon book readings and a statewide talent quest. She organised the Bicentennial Ball, held at the newly restored Queen Victoria Building, with a fundraising raffle for a donated Kawai grand piano.

During this period, she contributed about 50 freelance articles to Sydney-based press and magazines, including a three-part coverage of the 1987 America's Cup for the Australian Financial Review.

Career in Life Writing
In 1988, Bill Lockley, the former head of Insight Advertising where she had worked in 1974, established Camp Creative, a Summer School in Bellingen NSW, involving the author Bryce Courtenay and the pianist David Helfgott. North assisted Lockley in organising the camp, and developed a series of structured workshops with related teaching materials for courses in writing skills and creativity.

Through the 1990s, North taught literature and Life Writing skills while publishing freelance journalism and book reviews and conducting communications-related market research projects. She completed a Master of Arts (Honours) dissertation on Cusack in 1990 at the University of Wollongong.

North moved to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney in 1992 and launched Muse Ink productions, organising literary and musical events from 1990 to 2000. Her research on Cusack and her partner Norman Freehill appeared in articles in literary journals, including Meanjin, Overland, Hecate, and the London Times Literary Supplement. In 1993 she produced a television documentary for ABC Television on soprano Marilyn Richardson, directed by Tom Zubrycki. In 1997 she began her first publishing venture, Jomaru Press, and published several books.

From 2000, North worked as a sessional lecturer in Australian literary and cultural history at Boston University Sydney, which had established a Study Abroad internship. She enrolled at the University of Queensland where she tutored and was editorial consultant with the University of Queensland Press. There she organised book launches, acted as a reader for unsolicited manuscripts, and developed and implemented marketing strategies for new publications of UQ Press.

In 2001 she published an experimental biographical text of friendship, politics and literature woven through the letters between Cusack and two other contemporary writers Miles Franklin and Florence James. The book Yarn Spinners received the Christina Stead Award for Biography, and had many favourable reviews.

In 2005 North edited a special edition of the Social Alternatives journal on feminist futures with Elizabeth Webby AM. That year she was a judge for the NSW Premiers' Non-fiction Award.

Later years
From 2003 to 2011, North cared for her aged mother Evadne. In 2014 North married Robert Jones, a blues musician and painter, and together they began Yarnspinners Press Collective. She published several books, including an edited chapbook of the life and literary contribution of Vera Deacon, "Singing Back the River", and "Lucky in Love", a chapbook of Cusack's love poems containing a play for voices by North, "We've Been So Lucky, Fella!". She was on the judging panel of the Kathleen Mitchell Award for young novelists in 2014. In 2017 she published a greatly revised and expanded second edition of Yarn Spinners. North's husband Jones died in 2018 of haemochromatosis.

In 2023 North revived Yarnspinners Press Collective,and published two books of poetry in 2023: a 3rd edition of "What About the People!" by Dorothy Hewett and Merv Lilley; and "What the Land Had to Say" by Reese North.

Family
Of North's three siblings,


 * Christopher Mark North (1947–2020) was principal advisor to three Federal Government Ministers for Transport and Communication. After retiring from the APS, he was director of several telecommunications companies.
 * Reese John North (born 1953) is a Newcastle performance poet.
 * Kathryn Nance North AC, a neurologist and clinical geneticist, is Director of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and David Danks Professor of Child Health Research at the University of Melbourne. She received the Peter Wills Medal in 2019.

Her daughter Natalie Wilson is curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She curated the Archibald Centennial Retrospective, Archie 100, in 2021.

Books

 * 1975: Blue Glass and Turtles Eggs. Jacaranda Press.
 * 2001: Yarn Spinners: A Story in Letters. University of Queensland Press. Winner of the 2001 Fellowship of Australian Writers Christina Stead Award for Biography.
 * 2017: Yarn Spinners: A Story of Friendship, Politics and a Shared Commitment to a Distinctive Australian Literature, Woven Through the Letter of Dymphna Cusack, Florence James, Miles Franklin, and Their Congenials. Revised and expanded second edition, Brandle and Schlesinger, Sydney.
 * 2019: Singing Back the River. A chapbook in honour of Vera Deacon. Yarnspinners Press Collective.

Book chapters and encyclopaedia entries

 * 2002: Entry for Dymphna Cusack in Samuels, S. (ed) Dictionary of Literary Biography, Australian Writers 1915–1950. Broccoli Clark Layman, Gale Group, Michigan USA.
 * 2005: Co-editor with Prof Elizabeth Webby, "Australian and International Feminisms 1975–2005: Where We've Been and Where We're Going" Special Edition of Social Alternatives 24 (2).
 * 2007: Australian Dictionary of Biography entry for Dymphna Cusack.
 * 2015: “Dymphna Cusack and the Hunter” in Bennett, J (ed) Radical Newcastle (New South Press) pp 144–151.
 * 2020: Australian Dictionary of Biography entry for Florence James (1902–1993).

Papers

 * 1979: Formative Research Techniques in Children's Television Program Production. Media International Australia