Suzanne Falkiner

Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow has been included among five shortlisted titles for The Magarey Medal for biography. A biennial prize, this is awarded to the female author who has published the work judged to be the best biographical writing on an Australian subject in the preceding two years. The winner will be announced at the opening night of the 2018 Literary Convention at the Australian National University, Canberra, on 3 July.

From among 400 entries overall, Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow is one of five shortlisted titles in the Non-Fiction category of the 2017 the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. The winner will be announced on 1 December.

Judges’ Comments

Suzanne Falkiner has undertaken extensive research and uncovered new material about an enigmatic novelist and poet who spent his final years as a recluse far from his country of birth. The text ranges from his childhood in wartime rural Western Australia to his formative years studying in Perth through to his years as a wandering ex-pat, and eventually as resident of the port town of Harwich Essex.

Stow’s brilliance was combined with personal battles against depression and mental illness and Falkiner handles this material with respect while never avoiding the truth of the writer’s life. In many ways this is a conventional biography but Falkiner’s curiosity and interest in the social and cultural context in which Stow worked, make it a compelling read.

From among 71 entries, Mick: A Life of Randolph Stow was one of six shortlisted titles in the 2017 National Biography Award.

Judges’ Comments

Suzanne Falkiner’s Mick: A life of Randolph Stow is the first comprehensive biography of one of Australia’s greatest writers. Falkiner has pieced together an intriguing life history, from Stow’s beginnings in rural Western Australia, to his wandering years, and his later retreat into near silence and more-or-less contented obscurity in England. We note the biography’s extraordinary scholarship — involving exhaustive research and expert handling of the material — and its subtle, cumulative sense of this incredibly complex and difficult subject. While Mick is not a ‘lit-crit’ study of Stow’s works, it richly contextualises those works within the broader arc of the writer’s life. It reveals how he wove into his fiction and poetry various strands of his life experiences, travels, relationships, torments and his search for meaning. Stow’s elusiveness makes him an unusually challenging subject for a biographer, and this superb biography has met the challenge.