Peter Goldsworthy

Peter Goldsworthy has won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the South Australian Bicentennial Award and an Australian Bicentennial Literary Award.

Peter Goldsworthy was born in South Australia. Since graduating in medicine from the University of Adelaide, he has divided his working time between general practice and writing.

Peter writes across a variety of genres: short story, poetry, the novel, and opera. He has won numerous literary awards for his writing, including the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, and the Australian Bicentennial Literary Prize for Poetry in 1988. His most recent novel, Three Dog Night (Viking, Australia, 2003), won the 2004 FAW Christina Stead Award, and was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award, the Courier-Mail Book of the Year, and both the Queensland and NSW Premier's Awards. His novels Wish (Angus & Robertson, Australia, 1995) and Honk If You Are Jesus (Flamingo, Australia, 1995) are currently being adapted for stage, and both Honk and Maestro (Angus & Robertson, Australia, 1997) for film.

Various composers, such as Graham Koehne, Matthew Hindson, and Richard Mills, have set Peter Goldsworthy's poetry to music. He wrote the libretti for Richard Mills' Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1996), and Batavia (2001), the latter winning Mills and Goldsworthy the 2002 Helpmann Award for Best New Australian Work, as well as Best Opera. His novels have sold over a quarter of a million copies in Australia alone, and have been translated into several European and Asian languages, as have his short stories and poetry.

Contact: Curtis Brown Australia
www.curtisbrown.com.au