Richard flanagan author biography templates
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Richard Flanagan
Australian novelist
For the American lawyer, see Richard Flannigan.
Richard Miller Flanagan (born ) is an Australian writer, who won the Man Booker Prize for his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North[1] and the Baillie Gifford Prize for Question 7, making him the first writer in history to win both Britain's major fiction and non-fiction prizes.[2]
Flanagan was described by the Washington Post as "one of our greatest living novelists".[3]
"[C]onsidered bygd many to be the finest Australian novelist of his generation", according to The Economist,[4] the New York Review of Books described Flanagan as "among the most versatile writers in the English language".[5]
He has also worked as a bio director and screenwriter.
Early life and education
[edit]Flanagan was born in Longford, Tasmania, in , the fifth of six children. He is descended from Irish convicts transported to Van Diemen's nation during th
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AustLit
Born in in regional Tasmania, Richard Flanagan was the fifth of six children. Educated at state schools, Flanagan left school at the age of sixteen to work as a labourer in the bush. He grew up in the mining town of Rosebery and in he earned a Bachelor of Arts (History) from the University of Tasmania. In he was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford’s Worcester College where he earned a Master of Letters.
He published his first novel in , Death of a River Guide , a reflective account of a drowning man’s life and ancestors. Influenced by Flanagan’s own experience as a Kayak guide on Tasmania’s Franklin River the novel was awarded the Australian National Fiction Award. This was followed by the highly acclaimed novel The Sound of One Hand Clapping () which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards Prize for Fiction in In he went on to win the Commonwealth Writers Prize as well as the Victorian Premier’s L
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Richard Flanagan: What the Writer Needs is a Mad Courage
Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan has been called “one of our greatest living novelists” (Washington Post). His seven novels have received numerous awards, including the Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and the Commonwealth Prize for Gould’s Book of Fish. He also has been an outspoken activist on the environment with several nonfiction publications, mostly recently Toxic, an exposé of the Tasmanian salmon industry. In May , he delivered the PEN Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture.
His latest novel, The Living Sea of Waking Dreams (Knopf), has been called a “magical realist tale of ecological anguish … [that is] also playful… at its heart, hopeful” (The Guardian) and a “cry of alarm about what we choose to pay attention to” (New York Times Book Review). I found it to be one of the most profound, moving novels I’ve ever read, a true masterpie