A Writer's Sister

NZ Truth, Issue 1201, 6 December 1928, Page 17

A Writer's Sister

pHRISTCHURCH knew Miss Ness Mackay opme years ago wbsn. she was an enthusiastic believer Jel the then rat"her new idea of eur^jthmlo ! dancing. Sine© than, this youn.g>frtster of Jessie Mackay, on? of New 2e^and's best-known poetic people, has b|sen m Sydney, doing a flicker among the rising stars of the literary world, and helping just a little to keep them rising. Ness is a journalist herself, contributor to various magazines and papers, while she has also sat high up In the very uncomfortable Ladies' Press Gallery of Wellington Parliament. The year before an election and the year after, these being the most interesting periods/usually see a brown-haired little lady perched up aloft, propping her 'eyelids up like David Copperfield when the debates are spun out to more than usually ungodly hours. Modern m many ways, Miss Mackay is an opponent of bills that are on the negative side — those tending to interfere' with the normal life of the people. She is no friend to the Child Welfare Act, and is one of the few moderns left who "believe m genuine independence. Miss Mackay Is living, now, m Auckland, where many of Sister Jessie's tuneful little poems were written. She' belongs, up there, .to- a legion of societies and clubs, most of them ready to keep a sympathetic eye on the ways of the writing woman. A very pleasant, ,lf quiet, member of the literary fraternity.