Born in the Wimmera region of Victoria, Lorraine Heaven was the oldest of 5 children of farmers Stan and Sophie Heard. She attended Lowan Primary School, and at the age of 11 went as a boarder to Queen's C E G G S in Ballarat. As a child she was a regular contributor to the 3DB Children's Show with Jean Lawson, writing under the pen name of 'Tasmanian Devil'.
Lorraine's connections with SA go back to before the 1850s when her mother's family came to SA from Silesia in Central Europe. She herself first lived in SA in 1958, and her youngest son was born in Pt Lincoln in 1960. She worked for a spell in Gladstone and Pinnaroo and finally settled in SA at Blanchetown in 1982. In 1986 she left the Riverland to live in the city. She has worked as a telephonist, a receptionist, a teacher and a welfare worker. She notes that her special interest is 'detail'; detail which takes things above the average - pattern, colour, fine needlepoint, caligraphy, grammar...
As well as the work listed below she has had her poem 'Digging Sandy's Grave' read on 'Poetry of the People' (FM915, Sydney). This poem was Very Highly Commended at the Grenfell Henry Lawson's Festival of Arts Bush Poetry Competition 1993, and her poem 'The Boxing Fan' was Highly Commended in the Traditional Verse Competition at the Grenfell Henry Lawson Festival of Arts 1992. She was awarded a Certificate of Merit for her 'Love Letters for Lulu' in the Unibooks SA Short Story Competition 1995. Her pseudonym 'Amanda Davies' was used for an autobiographical article 'Single Mother 1950s Style' in the women's newspaper, Women's Voices (1996).
