Authors by year of birth
Descended from German, English and Irish immigrants who arrived in Australia in the 1830s and 1840s, Christopher Koch was born in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1932 and educated at Clemes College, St Virgil's...
Audrey Evans was an elder of the Gungarri/Kunja language group and an academic. Evans did not enjoy school as a child and was happy to start working at the age of eleven to help provide financial...
Kevin Gilbert (10 July 1933 - 1 April 1993) was born into the Wiradjuri nation on the Kalara riverbank (Lachlan River) in Condobolin, Central New South Wales. During his lifetime Kevin was a tireless...
Pamela Allen studied Fine Art, followed by one year's training at Auckland Teachers College. She worked as an art teacher in secondary schools and began illustrating for other authors. After moving...
Inga Clendinnen won 2004 Kiriyama Prize for nonfiction for her study of the first years of European settlement in New South Wales, Dancing with Strangers (Text Publishing, Melbourne).
In...
Dr. Ruby Langford Ginibi was born at Box Ridge Mission, Coraki, on the north coast of New South Wales in 1934 and is a proud Bundjalung woman, growing up in Bonalbo and attending high school in...
Cliff Green grew up in the outer Melbourne suburbs of Sunshine and Upwey. After leaving Upwey High School at 14, he worked as an office boy and later undertook an apprenticeship as a compositor in...
Alan Hopgood grew up in Tasmania, and acted in several dramatic roles while still a child. After finishing school in Melbourne, he attended the University of Melbourne, graduating with a Bachelor of...
Barry Humphries was born in Melbourne and attended Melbourne Grammar with some distinction, attracting a scholarship to attend the University of Melbourne. His experience of growing up in suburban...
David Malouf's paternal family came to Australia in the 1880s from Lebanon. His mother's family, Sephardic Jews from Spain who had gone to England via Holland, migrated to Australia in 1913. Malouf...
Brian McFarlane has taught for many years at Monash University, his main area of interest being the history of film. Husband of Geraldine McFarlane (q.v.).
Writer, poet, novelist and humourist, Margaret Scott migrated to Australia with her first husband, Michael Boddy (q.v.), in 1959. She had been educated at Redland High School and Newnham College,...
Rodney Hall was born in 1935 in Warwickshire, England, emigrating to Australia soon after World War II. In 1971 he graduated from the University of Queensland and worked at a variety of jobs related...
Thomas Keneally trained for several years for the Catholic priesthood but did not take Orders. He worked as a schoolteacher and clerk and taught drama at the University of New England. From the mid-...
A Binjareb elder, Lorna Little spent her formative years at the Moore River Native Settlement. During World War II, Little's family moved back to their ancestoral home in Pinjarra, Western Australia...
A playwright and journalist, Leonard Radic worked as the deputy theatre critic for the Age (Melbourne) from 1964-1974 and as the theatre critic from 1974. Radic was educated by the De La Salle...
Randolph Stow is the son of Cedric Ernest Stow, a country lawyer, and Mary Stow nee Sewell. Both sides of the family were fifth generation Australians. The Stows came from Hadleigh in Suffolk,...
Robin Klein was educated at Newcastle Girls' High School. After working as a teacher, nurse, library assistant and craft worker, she became a full-time writer in 1981. Her first book, The Giraffe in...
As a child Alexander McPhee Miller lived in south London, the son of an Irish mother and a Scottish father, whose background he has described as 'culturally rich'. Before migrating alone to Australia...
Doris Pilkington's Aboriginal name is Nugi Garimara and she was born on 'traditional birthing ground under the wintamarra tree' (q.v.) on Balfour Downs Station in the East Pilbara region of Western...
Frank Moorhouse began his writing career as a cadet journalist on the Sydney Daily Telegraph. Later he worked on several country newspapers and became editor of the Australian Worker in 1963. His...
Tony Morphett worked as an interviewer and reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Daily Telegraph, before turning to freelance writing. His first two novels Mayor's Nest (1964...
Mudrooroo was born at East Cubelling (near Narrogin) in Western Australia. At the age of nine he was placed in a Catholic orphanage, where he lived until he was sixteen. He spent a year in Fremantle...
Les Murray grew up on his grandfather's small dairy farm in the close-knit Presbyterian community of Bunyah and attended area schools before matriculating to Sydney University in 1957. Pursuing his...
Born in 1938 in Hobart, son of a journalist and historian, Henry Reynolds graduated from the University of Tasmania with an MA. He taught in secondary schools in Australia and England before taking...
Glenda Adams was born and educated in Sydney. She studied Indonesian and other languages at the University of Sydney and spent some time in Indonesia on a small scholarship before returning to Sydney...
Victor Kelleher moved with his parents to Africa at the age of fifteen; then he spent the next twenty years travelling, studying and teaching. He completed his university education in South Africa...
Screenwriter, producer, director.
Fred Schepisi began his career in advertising. He later served as head of the Film House for almost 20 years where he directed both commercials and...
Rosemary van den Berg was born at Moore River Native Settlement. Her parents moved to Pinjarra when she was five years old, where they bought a five acre block of land. Van den Berg grew up with five...
Wagner arrived in Australia when she was nine years old. Her studies at Melbourne University included German, Dutch, Swedish and philosophy. Her books are informed by both her studies and the...
One of the vanguard filmmakers of the Australian film renaissance of the 1970s, several of his early career productions are considered to be among the most influential and successful films of that...
Carmel Bird was born and educated in Tasmania, taking a BA before embarking on a twenty year teaching career in 1961.
Bird published her first collection of short stories in 1983 and has...
J. M. Coetzee was born in South Africa of Boer and English descent. In the 1960s he moved to England working as a computer programmer before studying literature in the United States. He was awarded a...
