Dr Catherine Garrett is an independent writer who now lives in the Australian country town of Braidwood. A sociologist by training, she spent sixteen years as an academic at the University of Western Sydney, retiring for medical reasons in 2004. Her work on the body, chronic illness and healing has appeared in Social Science and Medicine, the Journal of Contemporary Religion, the International Journal of Eating Disorders and Health Sociology Review, among other publications. She is a contributor to Making Sense Of: Health, Illness and Disease (eds. Twohig and Kalitzkus, Rodopi, 2004) and the author of Beyond Anorexia: Narrative, Spirituality and Recovery (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998).