Shirley decided to become a writer while in Primary School, but her ambition lay dormant until she and her husband sailed their own yacht around Australia in the 1990s. She joined her first writing group in 1998 and has since been published in over forty anthologies and self-published three novels.

Shirley joined The Society of Women Writers WA in 2010 and has been Treasurer since 2017.

In 2022 she won the Bronze Quill for her Short Story, Anatomy of an Accident, and in 2023 was BQ Runner-up for Poetry.

More information can be found on her website at: www.shirleyrowland.wordpress.com.