The Brisbane Woman Bringing Back the Joy of Handwritten Letters

Once a month, a small parcel lands in letterboxes around Australia and beyond — a personal letter, a poem, an original piece of art, sometimes a small handmade surprise, hand wrapped by the Brisbane woman behind it. It's called a Parcel of Joy, and it's the whole idea behind Steph Rowe's Dear Diary Letter Club: proof, she says, that a handwritten letter can still hold something a group chat can't.

Rowe traces it back to her grandmother. While travelling around Australia — through the red centre, down to Tasmania, up into Far North Queensland — the two wrote to each other constantly, Rowe sending photos, postcards and small trinkets from the road, her nan somehow always tracking down her latest address. "It became our ritual, our quiet way of staying close," Rowe says. When her grandmother passed, those letters became a keepsake she still returns to: "I still read them when I need to feel held, remembered and reminded that words can carry love across time."

That feeling — of being seen and connected through something handwritten — is what Rowe set out to recreate for strangers.

Each Parcel of Joy centres on a different Australian artist, one per month across a rolling yearlong lineup. Rowe pays the artist directly to license their work, writes up their story, and packs a print into that month's parcel alongside a personal letter, poetry and the odd surprise — a sticker, a print, "a tiny treasure that feels like a gift from the universe." The current run stretches from Karlena Lewin Studio in January through to Luke Alexander Creative in February 2027, taking in artists including Charli Savage, Rebecca Bresnahan and Andy McIntyre along the way.

A Parcel of Joy, courtesy of Dear Diary Letter Club.

For the artists, it's a paid, unhurried spotlight that social media rarely offers. "Being a highlighted artist for the Dear Diary Letter Club was such an honour and a unique experience," says surrealist artist Charli Savage, one of the club's featured creatives. "I love that Steph pays the artists she highlights, which shows how much she values their work."

Subscribers describe something closer to a ritual than a transaction. "Opening my Dear Diary Letter Club parcel each month feels like receiving a little piece of magic," says subscriber Terrica Strudwick. "My household now gathers to read the letters together. We talk about the artwork, share what lines spoke to us... It has become a ritual we all look forward to, a small, beautiful pause in our week."

Rowe came to this full-time after being made redundant from a corporate role — a shift she describes less as a fallback than a decision to lean into "the work that sets my soul alight." She's also the publisher of two international poetry anthologies, The World In Our Words and The World In Our Words II, which bring together poets from multiple countries and pay royalties on every sale — the same instinct for paying creatives properly showing up there too.

It all adds up, in Rowe's own words, to a small, steady act of hope: "A reminder that there are still people willing to write, to make, to care... A little piece of our hearts being sent out into the world, one parcel at a time."

A peek inside a few of this year's parcels:

The year's featured artists

• January — Karlena Lewin (@karlena_lewin_studio)
• February — Nour (@pop_art.collection)
• March — Marisa Zimmerman (@loveshutterbug)
• April — Charli Savage (@charlisavageart)
• May — Steph Rowe
• June — Rebecca Bresnahan (@rebeccabresnahan.art)
• July — Moon Ramone (@moonramone.art)
• August — Robert Koudijs (@robert.koudijs.visuel.arts)
• September — Andy McIntyre (@little_bones)
• October — Jemima Longworth
• November — Imogen, Serpents Sun
• December — Tzaddi Gordon
• January 2027 — Emily Lamburd
• February 2027 — Luke Martin, Luke Alexander Creative

Dear Diary Letter Club ships monthly, Australia-wide and internationally — find it at mrsrowe.org/letters or @deardiaryletterclub on Instagram.