Where to find Sally’s words

Selection of Sally’s video footage:

Selection of Sally’s audio broadcasts:

Selection of Sally’s online articles:

Media coverage:

Click here to access an archive of media coverage since 2020, including interviews, features and reviews of the Packing for Greece series.

Travel memoirs and anthologies:

Repacking for Greece: A Mediterranean Odyssey

Join Sally as she explores, rambles and reads her way around the Greek mainland and islands.

Book Two in the ‘Packing for Greece’ series travels to Athens and Delphi on the mainland; Nafplio, Mycenae, Epidavros and Methana on the Peloponnese Peninsula; and the islands of Hydra, Poros, Kefalonia and Corfu (with a side trip to Albania).

Find out more about Repacking for Greece.

The cover of Repacking for Greece, showing Sally's hand holding her mother's diary in front of the remains of a temple near Delphi
The cover of Unpacking for Greece shows the honey-coloured stone columns of the Parthenon against a deep blue sky. A hand is holding up an old snapshot from 1978 in front of the Parthenon, as if trying to match the scene. The sepia photo shows two women – my mother and grandmother – sitting on the temple steps. There is a tagline on the cover reading: Travel in a land of fortresses, fables, ferries and feta.

Unpacking for Greece: Travel in a Land of Fortresses, Fables, Ferries and Feta

Join Sally as she embarks on a solo journey across the magnificent Greek mainland and islands.

Book One in the ‘Packing for Greece’ series travels to Athens and Meteora on the mainland; Monemvasia, Sparta and Methana on the Peloponnese Peninsula; and the islands of Santorini and Rhodes.

Find out more about Unpacking for Greece.

Sally’s flash piece of grief writing, “Pain Travels With Me”, was longlisted for the Grieve Project 2024.

Grieve: Stories and Poems of Grief and Loss (Volume 11) is available directly from the Hunter Writers’ Centre.

The cover of the Newcastle Short Story Award Anthology 2022

“Eleven-Thirty” – Sally’s experimental exploration of travel and grief – placed as a finalist in the Newcastle Short Story Award 2022.

In “Eleven-Thirty”, a young woman’s ashes journey from Hanoi to Cape Town, while an older woman flees into the Turkish hinterland in a futile attempt to outrun her loss. The story appears in the award anthology published by the Hunter Writers’ Centre.

Twenty writers share their adventures in this anthology of travel stories.

“Some Leafs: Grandma Gropp’s Tale” – published in Itchy Feet: Tales of Travel and Adventure – weaves Sally Jane Smith’s words with those of her great-great-grandmother, a woman who led an extraordinary life on four continents and at the edges of three wars. From a message in a 19th-century bottle to a modern-day tragedy, “Some Leafs” asks: should we follow our wanderlust, or stay safe at home?

The cover of "Itchy Feet: Tales of Travel and Adventure". The cover is green and shows an old-fashioned open suitcase sitting open on the grass with a pair of hiking boots next to it.. Inside the suitcase is an island surrounded by ocean under a blue sky with clouds.