About the Author

Graeme Sparkes is a Melbourne-based writer. He was born in Launceston, Tasmania, in 1951, but grew up in Portland on the west coast of Victoria. He studied sociology and history at La Trobe University in Melbourne, taught in the secondary education system for four years, and then spent a decade as an itinerant labourer and taxi driver, before returning to teaching. In the late eighties he travelled extensively abroad and wrote Beyond Tijuana about his journey through Latin America in 1992, the quincentenary of Columbus voyages to the New World. Since travelling around Australia and writing The Red Island in the mid-nineties, he has been teaching English to young adult refugees and migrants at a TAFE college in Melbourne and to university students in China. He has recently completed his third book, You never Met My Father, an account of living with a father who suffered a life-long mental illness. He enjoys reading, camping in summer, walking by the Merri Creek all year round, and live blues music at the local pubs on weekends. He lives in the northern suburbs with his long-time partner, Sonia