Bri Lee is always working. It is obvious in the deeply confessional books she has written: using her law degree and story of being molested as a child to explore how the law handles sexual crimes (2018’s Eggshell Skull); her own eating disorder to examine body image (2019’s Beauty); and her anxieties about her own intelligence driving an investigation into the sexist, racist, classist history of education (2021’s Who Gets to Be Smart?).
But there is also the mini empire she has built in a startlingly short time: the Walkley-nominated investigative journalism, the keynote speeches, the newsletter, the podcast, the PhD in law she is completing while also lecturing. She’s the sort of cool girl author who can campaign for reforms to defamation law and sex education while also featuring in campaigns for Mimco and Camilla and Marc. She runs writing workshops for those keen enough to spend thousands on learning just how Lee does it; when we speak, she has just held one in Egypt and another in Sydney (no spots left for Sri Lanka in September – $5,000 a pop, flights not included). Oh, and last year she went to Antarctica for a month to research her next book.
