Rodney Hall (writer)

Rodney Hall AM (born 18 November 1935) is an Australian writer.

Biography

Born in Solihull, Warwickshire, England, Hall came to Australia as a child after World War II and studied at the University of Queensland (1971).[1] In the 1960s Hall began working as a freelance writer, and a book and film reviewer. He also worked as an actor, and was often engaged by the Australian Broadcasting Commission in Brisbane. Between 1967 and 1978 he was the Poetry Editor of The Australian.[2] He began publishing poetry in the 1970s and has since published thirteen novels, including Just Relations and The Island in the Mind. He lived in Shanghai for a period in the late 1980s. From 1991 to 1994, he served as chair of the Australia Council.[3]

Hall lives in Victoria. In addition to a number of literary awards such as twice winning the Miles Franklin Award, he was appointed a Member of Order of Australia for "service to the Arts, particularly in the field of literature" in 1990.[4]

Hall's memoir Popeye Never Told You was launched in May 2010 and was published by Pier 9.

He was co-founder of the Australian Summer School of Early Music in Canberra. In June 2014 he staged Jacopo Peri's opera Euridice at the Woodend Winter Arts Festival.[5]

Awards

The Miles Franklin Award	Just Relations, winner 1982
	The Grisly Wife, winner 1994
	Captivity Captive, shortlisted 1989
	The Second Bridegroom, shortlisted 1992
	The Day We Had Hitler Home, shortlisted 2001
	Love Without Hope, shortlisted 2008
	A Stolen Season, shortlisted 2019[6]
Victorian Premier's Literary Award	Captivity Captive, The Vance Palmer Prize for Fiction 1989
The Age Book of the Year	The Island in the Mind, Fiction Prize shortlisted 1996
Australian Literature Society Gold Medal	The Second Bridegroom, winner 1992
	The Day We Had Hitler Home, winner 2001
NBC Banjo Awards	Captivity Captive, NBC Banjo Award for Fiction, shortlisted 1989
	The Grisly Wife, NBC Banjo Award for Fiction, shortlisted 1994
	The Island in the Mind, NBC Banjo Award for Fiction, shortlisted 1997
FAW Barbara Ramsden Award	Just Relations, Book of the Year winner 1982
FAW ANA Literature Award	Just Relations, winner 1982
Grace Leven Prize for Poetry	A Soapbox Omnibus, winner 1973
Adelaide Festival Awards for Literature	A Stolen Season, shortlisted 2019

Bibliography

Novels

• The Ship on the Coin. 1972.
• A Place Among People (1975)
• Just Relations (1982)
• Kisses of the Enemy (1987)
• Captivity Captive (1988)
• The Second Bridegroom (1991)
• The Grisly Wife (1993)
• The Island in the Mind (1996)
• The Day We Had Hitler Home (2000)
• The Last Love Story (2004)
• Love Without Hope (2007)
• A Stolen Season (2018)

Short fiction

Collections

• Silence (2011)

Poetry

Collections

• The Climber (1962)
• Penniless Till Doomsday (1962)
• Forty Beads on a Hangman's Rope (1963)
• Eyewitness (1967)
• The Autobiography of a Gorgon (1968)
• The Law of Karma (1968)
• Australia (1970)
• Heaven, In a Way (1970)
• A Soapbox Omnibus (1973)
• Selected Poems (1975)
• Black Bagatelles (1978)
• The Most Beautiful World (1981)
• The Owner of My Face: New and Selected Poems (2002)
• The public turns to its hero (?)
• Dark Afternoons She Spent (1968)

Anthologies (edited)

• New Impulses in Australian Poetry (1968) with Thomas Shapcott
• Australian Poetry 1970 (1970)
• Poems from Prison (1973)
• Australians Aware (1975) (a collection of poems and paintings)
• Voyage into Solitude (1978) (a collection of Michael Dransfield poetry)
• The Second Month of Spring (1980) (a collection of Michael Dransfield poetry)
• The Collins Book of Australian Poetry (1981)
• Michael Dransfield Collected Poems (1987)

List of poems

Title	Year	First published	Reprinted/collected
Youth — Manhood — Middle Age	1965	Hall, Rodney (March 1965). "Youth — Manhood — Middle Age". Meanjin Quarterly. 24 (1): 111.

Non-fiction

• Focus on Andrew Sibley (1968)
• J. S. Manifold: An Introduction to the Man and His Work (1978)
• Australia - Image of a Nation 1850-1950 (1983) (the text of a photographic collection)
• Home: Journey Through Australia (1988)
• Abolish the States! (1998)

Memoirs

• Popeye Never Told You (2010)

References

1. Australian Poets and Their Works, by William Wilde. Oxford University Press, 1996
2. http://www.nla.gov.au/ms/findaids/4834.html#bioghist1 National Library of Australia
3. Head, Dominic (2006). The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge University Press. p. 475. ISBN 0-521-83179-2.
4. "Rodney Hall". honours.pmc.gov.au. Retrieved 11 December 2019.
5. "No looking back", The Age, 31 May 2014, Spectrum, p. 24
6. Boland, Michaela (2 July 2019). "'Try being a Leb': Author from Punchbowl shortlisted for Miles Franklin". ABC News. Retrieved 2 July 2019.

Further reading

• "Open Page with Rodney Hall". Australian Book Review (332): 80. June 2011.