Rodney Hall

Lecturer
The Centre for Ideas

Rodney Hall is an author with an international reputation. His books are published in the USA, UK, Australia and Canada and in translation into German, French, Danish, Swedish, Dutch, Norwegian, Spanish, Portuguese and Korean.

From 1991-1994 Rodney Hall was Chairman of the Australia Council. During this time he acquired a comprehensive overview of arts pratice throughout Australia and contacts at the highest level. He enjoyed a close association with the then Prime Minister, Paul Keating (who launched his novel The Grisly Wife at the Adelaide Festival). He was a member of the Creative Nation panel, planning future cultural developments extending beyond the scope of the Australia Council.

He has had twelve novels published, eleven collections of poems, two biographies, the texts for four books of photographs on Australian society, plus a travel book on Australia, a political polemic Abolish the States! and a libretto. A Return to the Brink, his play about the Myall Creek Massacre, was produced in the 1999 Melbourne International Festival. His second play, Vico: the first man to reach the past is a Playbox commission. He wrote and compiled the texts for the five Twilight Series performances for the Centenary of Federation Festival in Melbourne, 2001. He has edited/collected six anthologies. His latest publication is the novel The Last Love Story, published by Picador, June 2004. His radio scripts have been broadcast by the ABC and the BBC. He has written TV scripts for the ABC and is currently working on a film script, which has so far received two rounds of funding from Film Victoria.

From 1967-78 he was Poetry Editor of The Australian and Poetry Advisor to Angus & Robertson, 1972-75. In 1968 he became the first writer to be awarded a resident Creative Arts Fellowship at the Australian National University. He was awarded a “Keating” fellowship 1995-96.