She's Having a Laugh: 25 of Australia's funniest women on life, love and comedy

If, like Gretel Killeen, you regret not having spent more time laughing, here is your chance.

…these women writers are not just funny. They have also thought hard about the importance of comedy. After a tragic childhood, it's not surprising that Mandy Nolan's favourite quote is: "If you can laugh at it, you can survive it." Other contributors write of how comedy helped them deal with the stifling pressures of conformity, how it became a way of saying the unsayable. Fiona Scott Norman and her dying mother bonded through gallows humour; grieving for the child she could never have, Ginger Briggs found consolation in the black jokes of her female friends; and just when you thought there was nothing left to say about the vagina, Monica Dux reveals the hilarious horror story of her post-partum "crinkum-crankum".

- FIONA CAPP