One of the earliest memories I have is being told by my kindergarten teacher that journalism would be the career for me (you see how early they get you worrying about university admissions?), to which I promptly and confidently replied that I would never be a journalist in a million years as all journalists are 'blood sucking vampies.' That was only eleven years ago and already I have become an amateur journalist, although whether or not I am a blood sucking vampire I leave for you to decide. I am 17-years-old, I am the co-editor and, despite many accusations from family members involving my name and the word 'schizofrenia' I am perhaps the only member of the newlsetter staff with no alter-egos to speak of, with the possible exception of Prongsie.

I live in Sydney, Australia, am currently in my last but one year of high school, love LotR (obviously!), music, the cinema, books, hobbits, pizza, cats and a good deal many other things not worth listing. My phobias include arachnephobia (never trust any creature related to someone who tried to eat Frodo!), romancephobia (is that a word?) (and I saw that snigger! Laugh if you will, but 'love' is a terribly frightening word! First there's the 'lllll' part let alone the rest of the letters!) and spoilerphobia (don't ever tell me the end of a story unless you want me to become alarming). My main aspiration in life is to become a successful novelist, though at the moment I make do with fan fictions.

When I was 14 I started a site called All Things Lord of the Rings which, to my lasting shock and amazement, is actually still around at the moment!! About a year after that our esteemed Editor in Chief sent me a message asking if I'd written any articles about LotR recently as the very first edition of the newsletter was coming out in two days and she was having a nervous breakdown (Ok so not in so many words but I interpretted)! I didn't have any lying around just waiting for the day when someone would write to me saying it was a complete and utter emergency that I give them some (as a last resort, hehe) like most normal people do, but, being intrigued, I wrote one and sent it to her. And found that I actually quite enjoyed it, so I sent Perian another one. And I enjoyed writing that one, so I sent another, and another, and another, and since then, Perian has been almost permanently bombarded by articles from me for the newsletter whether she liked it or not until eventually she made me Primary Reporter, and from there well, go figure.

If you want to read any of my work apart from the stuff here go to All Things Lord of the Rings. If you want to write to me and tell me that you think my articles are good, or a pile of s***, whatever the case may be, my email address is:hobbitsinskirts@gmail.com (or even better, write a letter to the editor! I feel kinda lonely usually being the only one you know!). Apart from that I can't think of anything much else to say about myself as yet, but if anything occurs to me, you'll be the first to know! Until then, namarie!

Xara, in addition to being editor of the newsletter, is author of Fanfictions Lord of the Rings 4: Attack of the Spammers and Happy Hobbit Hotel. Random Fandom, a column interviewing subscribers, is also of her creation and under her care.