How portfolio careers can lead to happiness

Screenwriter, cartoonist and illustrator Megan Herbert used to be torn between artforms, but now embraces her portfolio career.
Megan Herbert, illustrator, writer, cartoonist and live-drawer

Hi Megan. Can you tell us a bit about who you are and what you do?

Sure. I’ve always been torn between the two things I like doing most, both writing and visual art.

I consistently got the message as a young person, as a child, that it was really nice to do visual art but it wasn’t a job. Because of that, I naturally leant into the more literary side, and that started out as an attempt to get a law degree. But I very soon realised that just was not me at all. So then I gravitated towards journalism at RMIT. But as soon as I graduated from journalism, I also knew that my calling was not to stick a microphone in a politician’s face. It just wasn’t what I was into.

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Paul Dalgarno is author of the novels A Country of Eternal Light (2023) and Poly (2020); the memoir And You May Find Yourself (2015); and the creative non-fiction book Prudish Nation (2023). He was formerly Deputy Editor of The Conversation and joined ScreenHub as Managing Editor in 2022. X: @pauldalgarno. Insta: @dalgarnowrites