AustLit

Joan Priest wrote a number of biographies of prominent Queenslanders, including : Virtue in Flying : a Biography of Pioneer Aviator Keith Virtue (1975), Outback Airman (co-written with Harry Purvis) (1979), The Thiess Story (1981), Scholars and Gentlemen : a Biography of the Mackerras Family (1986), Sir Harry Gibbs : Without Fear or Favour (1995), and Flight of Divas (2004). She also wrote her autobiography, The Literary Precipice, in 1998. She wrote several plays, for radio and for stage, including the musical, Passports Please, produced at La Boite Theatre, Brisbane, in 1976. She was also a poet. Priest was Queensland representative of the Australian Society of Authors (q.v.) from 1978 to early 1989, and served on the Warana Literary Arts Committee from 1983 to 1992, acting frequently as a guest speaker at Warana Writers festivals. She was a founding member of the Friends of Fryer Library Committee (University of Queensland) in 1978, and its president from 1984 to 1986. In 1998 she was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia, for 'service to literature as a writer and as a supporter of other writers'.