Amy Witting (26 January 1918 – 18 September 2001) was the pen name of an Australian novelist and poet born Joan Austral Fraser.
She has "melancholy memories of a repressive family life" and remembered the nuns at her school, St Brendan's College, as being "obsessed with the torments of hell".
For most of Witting's working life, teaching English and French, and making a living took priority, and writing was done only in her spare time.
[3] Her story outraged parents, politicians and teachers; the Minister for Education accused her of corrupting children and stated in Parliament that "Amy Witting is a scribbler on lavatory walls".
[2] Craven writes that "Witting was a great master of realism, a naturalist who could render a nuance in a line that might take a lesser writer a page".
[2] Witting's last three works – Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop, Faces and Voices, and After Cynthia – were written under difficulty: her sight and hearing were failing, and she was stricken with cancer.