Paper Bark Press
Photo: Juno Gemes
Rodney Hall
Rodney Hall is principally known as a novelist with an international reputation. But his first published works were poems, eleven books of which appeared between 1962 and 1982. He also helped change the face of Australian literature as the influential poetry editor of The Australian from 1967-78, opening the newspaper's pages to experimental and urban voices and making it the principal periodical venue for poets in Australia.
Three times his novels have been nominated for the Booker Prize. He won the Miles Franklin Award for Just Relations in 1982 and for The Grisly Wife in 1994, the Canada-Australia Award in 1988 and the Victorian Premier's Prize for Captivity Captive in 1989. From 1991-1994 he was chairman of the Australia Council. He has been twice presented with the gold medal of the Australian Literature Society, in 1992 and 2001.