|
Ian C Smith was born in the UK into an unhappy family. They arrived in Australia when he was ten and by the time he was fourteen he had left school, and he lived alone. He eventually completed a university degree in his thirties, and has worked as a cleaner, factory foreman, football coach, fruit and vegetable picker, gardener, house-husband, labourer, nightclub photographer, and teacher. He likes Alice Munro, Bob Brown, comedy, damp melancholy weather, Edward Hopper, film noir, Leo Kottke, receiving mail, the smell of ground coffee, and the Sydney Swans. He dislikes c&w music, John Laws, mobile phones, national anthems, the past, petrol heads, preachers, Russell Crowe, shaving, & tabloid newspapers. He now lives in the Gippsland Lakes region with his wife, the psychologist and writer Dr Debra Smith, and their four sons. He began writing fiction and had nearly sixty stories published in most of Australia’s literary magazines. He received a grant from The Literature Board of The Australia Council and two grants from Arts Victoria. Disillusioned with book publishers, he began writing narrative poetry and his poems have now been published widely in Australia, and some overseas. He has won nearly fifty literary competition first prizes, roughly half for fiction including The Arafura Open Short Story Award (twice), The K & M Teychenne Short Story Award (twice), and The Alexandra Hasluck Short Story Award; and half for poetry including The Red Earth Open Poetry Prize, The Apollo Award, and The Poets Corner/Montrose Winery Award. He has published two collections of poetry, These Fugitive Days, and This is Serious, both by Ginninderra. |
