Loretta Smith is a Melbournian born and bred, and she loves a good adventure story. Her bedside table brims with books half devoured and her laptop is filled with short stories, travelogues, songs, ideas for plays and films and a very nearly published memoir. Yes, she is a Gemini. She has a Bachelor of Education in Creative Arts and is a member of Writers Victoria. Her biography of Alice Anderson was shortlisted for the 2012 Hazel Rowley Fellowship. Loretta was also credited with providing the photographs of Alice Anderson and her ‘garage girls’ for the television documentary, The Wide Open Road, screened on ABC1 in 2011. Helped by spending the last three years on and off in hospital, Loretta completed the manuscript for publication and A Spanner in the Works: The Extraordinary Story of Alice Anderson and Australia’s First All-Girl Garage was published by Hachette in March 2019 (see the cover of the biography under Events).