Cirrus@Austlit

Hilarie Lindsay was born into a theatrical family. As a child, she danced with the Mosman Musical Society, and she later wrote and directed a revue in the local church hall. During World War II she worked as a telegraphist at the General Post Office. Lindsay joined her husband's toy manufacturing company in 1946 and served as president of the Australian Toy Manufacturers' Association. She became the first female divisional president of the Chamber of Manufactures. During this time she did some writing but it was in 1966 that she began to write seriously and in 1966 and 1967 she won the Grenfell Henry Lawson Prize for Prose with her short stories. She won the First Rotary International Poetry Award in 1975.

Lindsay wrote a number of books on games and toy-making in the 1970s. Her You're on Your Own - the Teenage Survival Kit was written when her own son was leaving home, and she also published a number of other household management and recipe books.

In 1974 she organised a playwrights' workshop on behalf of the Society of Women Writers (SWW) and started to write The Withered Tree. In that year she was awarded an MBE for Services to Literature.

Lindsay has been active in several literary organisations and has also written books on writing. She was New South Wales State President of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW) for many years, editing the 50th anniversary edition of their publication Ink (1977), and was editor or co-editor of their annual anthologies 1993-1995. She was also President of the SWW, New South Wales branch, 1970-1973 . The FAW, New South Wales, awards annual Hilarie Lindsay Awards for writing for school children, and in 1981 the SWW instituted the Hilarie Lindsay Award for achievement of a woman writer.