About Sally

Dear Daisy Chain is the portal for a curious narrative vista, a written and visual world rooted in social, ecological and publishing histories. As a storyteller, works by Sally Nansen explore the instinct of humankind to bear or not to bear the wind of their own making, legacies of the past drawing close as cautionary tales or as appeals for redemption. The human story is dealt with sharpness and tenderness by Sally: Time disappears, humanity faces itself.

A series of small run art books by Sally’s imprint Morris & Company Press, hand printed illustrations and editions, and public narrative artworks are her works to date. As illustrator, writer, printmaker, and book creator, Sally is mostly making artefacts created and felt by the hand, questioning tides of modern production and the spiritual fallout that has come from disconnection to the natural world. Doggedly the past persists in her, as muse and mentor. History is a mother whose milk is both sweet and bitter to her lips.

Sally’s books have been part of the 2022 and 2023 Melbourne Art Book Fairs (NGV), and the 2024 National Trust Australian Heritage Festival.

Go to Hobsons Bay Homegrown Authors Network for a listing of Sally’s writing and awards.

Praise from readers for The Birds (2023)

“Your book joins our library of classics, next to Kahlil Gibran and Wendell Berry. Thanks for the love and care you have put into crafting these rich and illustrative word-images. I finished it both elated and encouraged, and saddened and distraught. All at once. You have been courageous in pushing us (the readers) along in our journey. The call to be transformed. Overwhelmingly lovely and monstrously terrifying. Well done. Captivating, beautiful, poetic, unexpected. A ferociously fine tale.” ~ Nick

“‘The Birds’! So it is a bathing of the senses. It is sensational in the true meaning of the word. I couldn’t stop reading all those perfect words, poured over every beautiful illustration…” ~ Anne

“Holding this book is like holding a treasure” ~ Lindesay