Australian poet Dorothy Porter blazed across the literary scene like a meteor. She was even more seductive in real life than on the page and broke many women’s hearts in her short but busy amorous life. Now her adoring younger sister, Josie McSkimming has written Gutsy Girls, a revealing memoir biography of her sister and their family, exposing some of the darker aspects of life with their QC father Chester Porter.

A restless traveler, a passionate lesbian who fell in love as easily as breathing, Dorothy Porter consumed life at a heightened intensity and velocity. Her best known works made poetry part of the mainstream, including the crime verse novel The Monkey’s Mask. She beat cancer, but died in 2008 at the age of just 54, of pneumonia.