[1] To earn a living, they busked on the streets of New York City, New Orleans and Colorado for three years; Gerry played drums and Mandy tap danced.

In 1985 in New Orleans during Mardi Gras she met Yusef Komunyakaa, an African-American war poet (later to win a Pulitzer Prize).

[3] She discusses this in her third memoir, The Poet's Wife (2014), the writing of which was prompted by the 2003 murder-suicide of Komunyakaa’s subsequent partner, Reetika Vazirani, and their two-year-old son, Jehan.

Sayer and Nowra have separate homes not far from each other near Kings Cross, in which their daytime writing activities are conducted, and they come together in the evening.

Between 2006 and 2016 she was a columnist for Sydney newspaper, The Wentworth Courier, and for two years penned a humorous column in The Australian.

In 2021, she was the recipient of the Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship to complete her biography, Those Dashing McDonagh Sisters: Australia’s First Female Filmmaking Team.