Introduction:
Sondra Roberts-Stott does not merely write stories. She exhales them. They rise from the winding rural roads of Australia, from the memory of childhood train rides to London, from the quiet grief of lost friends and the noisy joy of raising four daughters. In her debut novel Table 31, and across her collections of poetry and essays, Sondra translates a lifetime of fragmented, beautiful, and broken moments into something whole—a voice that resonates long after the last page is turned.

• A Literary Life Born from Real Life

For most of her adult life, Sondra moved from one job to the next—26 careers in total, each lasting just long enough to teach her something new about people, emotions, and the world. She describes each job like a book she once read: detailed, emotional, hard to forget.

What makes her writing so powerful is not just its authenticity—it’s her ability to reflect. She doesn’t just recount events; she explores how they shaped her. Whether teaching a child to swim or assisting in a veterinary clinic, every human interaction planted the seed for a story.

• Anthea is Sondra, and Sondra is Anthea

In Table 31, Anthea is not just a protagonist—she’s a lens. She is the culmination of Sondra’s own healing, her introspection, her memories, and her imagination. The novel isn’t fiction in the conventional sense—it’s memory reassembled into metaphor.

The alphabetic format of the book isn’t a gimmick. It’s a form of discipline, a way of making order out of emotional chaos. Each letter, each character, is a mirror, revealing something about the self—past, present, or potential.

• A Poet of Rural Australia

Beyond her novel, Sondra continues to write poetry that captures the spirit of small-town Australia. She sees beauty in the overlooked—cracked roads, old shop signs, the hum of a caravan heater. Her words elevate the ordinary into art.

Sondra’s life today is quiet and simple, but the stories she writes are anything but. They pulse with life, pain, joy, and wisdom. In the solitude of her motorhome, with the hum of nature outside her window, she writes with a clarity few achieve.

Closing:
Sondra Roberts-Stott is more than a debut author—she is a witness. A witness to her own transformation, to the lives of the people she has loved and lost, and to the power of storytelling to reclaim, reframe, and restore. In Table 31, she has left a legacy—not just of words, but of courage. And in doing so, she invites all of us to pull up a chair and start listening to our own lives.